Shortsightedness is a national failing

YOUR photograph of the “City monorail plan that never got off the ground” (Nostalgia, April 20), brought back memories for me.

I used to possess the Konrad Smigielski book on the Leicester plan, sadly now lost.

This chief city planning officer was far ahead of his time with some wonderful, some not-so-wonderful, ideas to bring modernisation to our city.

The idea at the time was not, if memory serves me right, that the monorail ran from the then new Beaumont Leys town to Wigston, as stated in your article , but was to run as a first build from Beaumont Leys through the town to the far side of Victoria Park, in London Road.

Further branches would then be built to various areas of the city to link it all together.

This would have stopped all these arguments in Mailbox about the inadequacies of Leicester buses.

At the time it was no doubt due to lack of money that the council decided not to go ahead with this scheme. Semper Eadem – always the same – is this city’s legacy. Just imagine today’s cost for this enlightened scheme as against those of 1964!

Shortsightedness, whether motorway building, new road widths, railways – the list is endless – is a national trait.

All we do these days is build cycle lanes that are rarely, if ever, used; pedestrianise the city centre and build more and more student accommodation. Where is another ideas man like Smigielski?

James A Hutchinson, Leicester