Full marks to Bob Gunnell for putting his finger on the weaknesses in Brighton and Hove City Council's proposals for a Rapid Transport System (RTS).

I entirely agree that, in the city centre, the only realistic solution is an underground system (The Argus, July 23).

There is quite a lobby to reintroduce trams but this enthusiasm is largely emotional rather than practical. The decision to replace the trams with the much more flexible trolleybus in 1939 was taken because of increasing levels of traffic.

Since then, the volume of traffic has multiplied several times and many of the streets have been narrowed by traffic engineers (who never seem to travel by public transport) so that there is now far less road surface on which to lay tram tracks than there was in the Thirties. Furthermore, creating a new tramway today involves the very expensive task of moving the public services (gas, electricity, telephone etc.) from beneath the tracks.

The RTS needs to be able to move large numbers of passengers swiftly between major points within the city and along the principal corridors in a way which is not impeded by road-users.

Therefore, in densely-populated Brighton, the only place to go is underground. To avoid most surface disturbance, this should be by means of a bored tube rather than "cut and cover".

A few years ago, a large diameter tube was bored by Southern Water, who boasted it was big enough to drive a double-decker bus along. This proves that such construction is feasible.

An underground railway would not, of course, need such a large tube.

The city corporation, in its haste to acquire funding, has rushed through a plan which is more likely to add to, rather than alleviate, congestion.

-Peter Bailey, Brighton