‘Today I have a summons to the office.
‘I could go by boat. The two-hourly service runs to time, thanks to electronically operated locks. I could go by electro-bus and pick up tips on best buys at the ring road supermarkets. The monorail beside the road is fast and frequent; but it won’t stop anywhere central.
‘And in any case I have tomato plants to carry, so I had better risk black looks from my environmentally conscious neighbours and take the electric car.’
Don Chapman wrote this for the Oxford Mail in 1990 based on a briefing from Peter Jones, the then Deputy Director of the Oxford University Transport Studies Unit. We reproduce it here with his kind permission.