I WAS on Lendal Bridge not so long ago, facing the river. It was a warm autumn morning and a weak sun was glinting off the water. Isn’t York a wonderful place to live, I thought?

I turned back to be engulfed in a cloud of exhaust from a shabby white van. The traffic was nose to tail and the fumes were catching at the back of my throat.

Why doesn’t some forward-seeking council close this bridge and the rest of York’s internal roads to all but essential traffic, I thought.

All right, I know it was tried and those people who use the car to go a quarter of a mile were dead against it.

But I remember the closure of Lendal Bridge as a time when that part of the city was a calmer, nicer place.

I remember that local businesses claimed that they suffered financially. Was there a survey to find out if that was true or just propaganda pushed forward by the cars before people brigade?

Randall Northam, St Aubyns Place, York.