Sir – The artist’s impression of the SkyCab monorail in a recent edition showed why a monorail between Witney and Oxford will never be practicable, whichever bidder wins.

The carriage in the picture is approximately the same size as the passenger car in the distance, and yet is much closer. The passengers must therefore be much smaller – a monorail for children? 

Brave children, because the carriage is just about to crash into one of the uprights, bringing everything down. So maybe the WestOx proposal is more feasible. Their web site has a tasteful picture of a tram-like carriage cruising along a slim concrete pathway.

But only one carriage – that will remove a whole single busload of people from the A40. And the carriage looks very sleek – much smaller in fact than the real ones lower down. And only one pathway – but the proposal says the route will work in both directions.

If a real, industrial-strength monorail is to be considered, it would be much simpler to build a simple viaduct along the side of the A40 and divert some of the traffic to drive along it.

Roger Tempest
Corn Street
Witney