Letter: Taxi is cheaper, Ministers

Taxi is cheaper,

Ministers

Sir: Travelling to lunch with John Major by private car and getting home would cost Peter Lilley, Michael Heseltine, Gillian Shephard and Sir George Young a total of pounds 168 (at 0.33p per mile), with 11 hours' driving time (assuming there were no hold-ups) and produce about 120 kilograms of CO2 ("Lunch date with Mr Major could be a journey too far", 30 January).

If instead they used four large high-quality taxis, each sharing them with two other occupants making similar journeys, this would save them pounds 33 and they would only be responsible for 40kg of CO2. The journeys might take a bit longer while other people were picked up and dropped off en route but during this time they could read, work, phone etc.

What we need to develop in this country is the information infrastructure that would allow people making similar journeys to be matched together in this way and feed these matched journey requirements to the taxi companies for execution.

Possibly John Major's guests could discuss the method of achieving this during their lunch, researching it on the way there, and actioning it on the way home.

PETER MILLER

Community Technology Ltd

Cambridge