ONCE again, Gillygate traffic is backing up from Bootham Bar to Union Terrace car park by mid morning. Yet The Press of April 15 proclaimed free city-centre parking, while bemoaning the rising costs of a new cycle route.

Last week a major Government report attributed regional 3,700 deaths in 2010 due to air pollution in our region, primarily caused by car traffic. Meanwhile, our city is gridlocked and our response is... to offer free town centre parking, reopen Lendal Bridge and complain about the rising costs of cycle tracks.

Are we all on the same planet, I wonder?

City-centre retailers may be unhappy about the Monks Cross development, but encouraging more cars into the city centre through free parking is not the answer.

I would be interested to see a cost-benefit calculation of this initiative, especially one that takes environmental impact into account.

On the cycle track, no one wants to see the cost of public projects rising. However, unforeseen engineering issues can occur and in the long run cycle tracks are part of the solution.

In Copenhagen, 36 per cent of all journeys to work and school are made by bike and the city aims to be carbon neutral by 2025.

That is the kind of long-term vision we need in York. A cursory glance around Europe shows that this is the key to success, especially for compact heritage cities like ours. However, after the collapse of the Lendal Bridge pilot it feels like we are back to square one.

Eddy Adams, Whitelands, Earswick, York.