Your headline 'Chugging into the 21st Century' (Malvern Gazette, January 20) says it all!

Of course, the Conservators are right in thinking access to our Hills shouldn't be denied to the very old, the very ill - or even the very lazy.

With Europe's largest electronics research company and one of its biggest private car firms on the doorstep, however, they could surely have come up with a better answer than the one they're proposing. Indeed it's hard to think of anything less elegant, and less environmentally-friendly, than the tractor they currently envisage.

I suggest they ask QinetiQ, Morgan and other local high-tech firms for ideas and costings on a battery-operated electric vehicle that could carry, say, half a dozen people at a time from the town centre to the top of the Malverns in silence and safety and without polluting the atmosphere. When it's not doing that, it could probably help the fire service or do the odd school run.

If some really do fear all this is 'Blackpool', I suggest they too join the 21st Century and stop harking after the 19th.

David Robertson, Technology Response Limited, Croft Bank, West Malvern.