• YOUR editorial (Radical roads rethink is vital but shouldn’t be rushed, July 23) points out that vital road schemes – even if for sound motives – can cause problems if rushed.

However when Camden’s road planners are involved doing things slowly is no guarantee they won’t be a disaster either.

About 18 months ago you published a letter from me criticising the ill-thought-out road changes of the “West End Project” scheme to remodel main routes including Tottenham Court Road and Gower Street.

I pointed out that, among many other down sides, the tallest and most magnificent of the trees at Princes Circus, in front of the Shaftesbury Theatre and the Oasis swimming pool, had been destroyed.

Sadly that wasn’t the end of the massacre and further trees having been killed there recently. More sacrifices to some Camden planner’s vanity project. And only two large trees and one other tree now remain.

I’ve lived in the area long enough to remember the last time the road layout at Princes Circus was remodelled, around 40 years ago.

On that occasion a major reversal of traffic-flows didn’t take years, but was instituted almost overnight. And not one of the wonderful street trees lost so much as a branch.

So the problem is not really the speed of the implementation of road changes but whether they’re sensibly and sensitively thought through in the first place.

With Camden Council’s planners they generally are not.

ALBERT BEALE
Little Russell Street, WC1