C. Hamilton compares books to parking spaces and suggests that pensioners think they should be let off a fee just because they are a pensioner.

I don't want to compare the two but if we did, we could talk supply and demand. Libraries could order more books that are popular and governments could supply more parking spaces where needed. Looking at my list of books that I have requested to read, I can see one book that has been requested by 14 other readers, yet only one copy of it is in the ACT libraries. Let's get the balance a little better before we impose fines.

To say that the current changes are more equitable for users is not the case for me, a non-pensioner. I would prefer to wait longer for a book rather than be given it to read but have to return it before I can finish it just to avoid the fine.

There are plenty of ideas I could share but I am certainly not going to suggest pensioners should stop whining, think they are above the fines, compare apples with oranges and suggest that we offer waivers for only those in hospital.

V. Scipione, Monash

Oaks Estate demonstrates the problems to be expected following Northbourne Avenue demolitions. Estate residents complain of "the scale and concentration" of public housing ("Oaks Estate residents break their silence", March 8, p10).

A critical issue "is that high-needs housing tenants were being isolated in a suburb far from support services and with no public transport".

This is precisely what will occur if Northbourne Avenue's public housing, for tenants who have integrated with adjoining suburban communities, is destroyed.

Gary J. Wilson, MacGregor

I was glad to read that ACT Brumbies captain Stephen Moore stands for gender equality (Canberra Sunday Times, March 8, p46. The case for this goes way back, I believe, to the creation account in Genesis, Chapter 2:7-25. There God formed a woman from a rib taken from the man He had created, indicating, I believe, that she was not to be above or beneath him but to stand by his side as an equal.

Evelyn Bean, Ainslie

You don't have to be an economist, vote Liberal or live on the south side to see that the current plans for light rail are spectacularly silly.

First, the proposed line services a narrow (if potentially densely populated) corridor in a sprawling city. Second, for those who live or will live along that corridor, it offers few advantages over existing means of travel. Third, the plans for extension of the system have no more status than lines on a map, some of them absurdly drawn. Fourth, the plans take no account of likely innovations in forms of transport in future decades.

And then there are the details: what happens when a notional 200 patrons simultaneously alight in Civic during peak hour? So one might go on – and I haven't even mentioned cost effectiveness. In essence, the current proposals are ideologically driven and backward looking. The government has presented us with an early 20th century solution to the transport needs of a 19th century city.

They take little account of Canberra's rare assets, including the availability of empty spaces for transport corridors interchanges.

If light rail is to work in Canberra it must convey travellers from hub to hub much more quickly and conveniently than present options allow.

The current plans are so obviously and so deeply flawed that this government might well lose power at the coming election, leading to more roads, less attention on public transport, and an end to light rail for the foreseeable future – in other words, the opposite of what supporters of light rail intend.

What can Labor and the Greens be thinking?

Stephen Foster, Ainslie

The cat's out of the bag now. Former ACT treasurer Ted Quinlan reveals a prevalent government attitude to light rail here, and a loathing of Canberra itself ("Economists query tram business case", March 8, p4).

He believes (and hopes, apparently) the existing town centres, other than Civic, will wither, and that Canberra will become a single-CBD centric city, like most others. He apparently also believes the existing open space hills, ridges, and buffer zones will be developed.

Most of those misguided attitudes were entrenched in the Stanhope government's 2005 Canberra Central Task Force, established at the behest of an ALP heavyweight, a former Lord Mayor of Brisbane.

Apart from Civic being physically constrained by three mountains, Quinlan fails to understand that this is the capital, and that the landscaped campus-style National Triangle must dominate visually and symbolically; that the well-connected-up dispersed town centres are ideal in preventing urban sprawl blight, ensuring housing affordability, and engendering a sense of community. So, forget the machinations about financial viability etc., the proposed light rail system radiating from Civic simply isn't appropriate nor needed, and is irresponsible.

Jack Kershaw, Kambah

The Canberra Times is to be congratulated on its coverage of various views regarding light rail (Sunday, March 8).

The matter that worries most of us is the perceived advantage of swapping a bus service that not only copes with existing demand but has the capacity through a dedicated bus lane to cope with any increased demand.

It will be swapped with a tram service which would struggle to cope with eight thousand commuters a day. The price tag that Mr Corbell has announced of about $780million is two thirds of the cost of a similar line at Surfers Paradise. What would be sensible is that Mr Corbell enlists the ACT Auditor to cost his figures before any contracts are signed.

I think that an audit would reveal that for every dollar the trams cost, the community will lose three dollars.

The billion dollars the government will initially spend on trams could do so much for the lifestyle of Canberrans. The solution to traffic congestion is not a tram line but, where practicable, decentralisation of the Canberra workforce. It is a priceless gift to be able to work near where you live.

Howard Carew, Isaacs

The failure of TAMS to keep grasses cut along roadsides and in public parks is affecting the health of many ACT residents. Usually the heat kills off the grasses but the mild summer and regular rain has kept it growing.

Hay fever sufferers are not happy.

M. Pieteren, Kambah

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