I cannot welcome the plan to extend the Croydon Tramlink on to the road network in Sutton.

Putting tram lines on arterial roads is something that has not been attempted anywhere in London since the 19th century, and for good reasons.

During the construction phase, the disruption to businesses dependent on the local road network would be massive – and it could go on for years.

The Tramlink at present is essentially a light railway system. It is entirely off-road except in Croydon town centre, where it runs mainly on a one-way circuit and all but one of the roads it affects had been largely free of through traffic for years before it was built. What Sutton Council now supports is not a mere extension of Tramlink but an entirely different type of project.

Even as an off-road scheme, while Tramlink was under construction the pre-existing railway from Wimbledon to West Croydon was out of action for several years – just for the work needed to convert one kind of railway into another.

The final result there was a great improvement, but only because of two factors specific to off-road routes. Two new flyovers bypass rail junctions where train frequencies were previously constrained by points and signals; and at level crossings trams do not need the long road closure phases that are standard for conventional trains .

Yet for an on-road tramway it is hard to see what the long term improvement would be. Trams on the road would be restricted by all the same speed limits and signal controls as other road traffic. Compared with buses, on-road trams would be rather more efficient in operation but much less flexible in their routes and schedules.

I was amused to see that Sutton Council has voted a sum of £36,000 to lobby the Mayor of London for this scheme. Sutton Council and the Mayor’s Transport for London are a pair of local authorities with a mutual interest in this subject.

A visitor from outer space might even suppose that the two were politically at peace, given the present coalition at central government level.

Could they not just talk to each other in the normal way, through the paid officials which we already fund as taxpayers?

Even more amusing (or at least I hope it was not serious) was the London Mayor's claim to have spent “loads of dosh in Worcester Park … including parts of the High Street”, in your separate report on the Crossrail 2 project.

There is no street of that name in Worcester Park.

Central Road, which serves as a high street and is sometimes mistakenly so called, is not one of the Red Routes where Transport for London is normally responsible for road maintenance.

Nor does it seem to contain any special public transport infrastructure that might have attracted TfL funding, like the big bus shelter in St Nicholas Way, Sutton on which the Mayor's predecessor famously managed to spend £1m  a few years back.

Perhaps TfL's auditors could check on the loads of dosh which Boris thinks he has spent in a street that does not appear on any map.

Andy Thompson; Conrad Drive, Worcester Park

Do you agree? Or do you feel strongly about something else? Send your letter to: letters@suttonguardian.co.uk.