YOUR article and photographs "Trams finally reach end of line" (LET, March 7) made depressing reading.

I suggest "the march of progress on Blackburn Boulevard" is in some ways a retrograde step. In numerous towns and cities in Europe and North America, and even in this country in Manchester and Sheffield, street tramways are being built as an environmentally-friendly attempt to overcome congestion, exhaust pollution and noise levels.

Sadly, as is so often the case in North East Lancashire and much of Britain, we have to continue to tolerate old fashioned, noisy, exhaust polluting diesel buses while many similar densely-populated areas elsewhere in the world progress to quiet, clean, efficient electric urban transport in the form of trams and/or trolley buses.

Wouldn't it have been far-sighted and visionary of the authorities if the present much-needed redevelopment of the Boulevard had been for a European style tram station?

DAVID J PACK, Earnsdale Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.