Dear Editor, I would like to congratulate Patrice John for the excellent article about Copenhagen’s mayor, Klaus Bondam, and his talk about making Birmingham an eco-metropolis. The views outlined in the article are extremely sensible, and also achievable.

It seems to me that a lot of this is based on very simple changes being made and what he talks about more than anything is people changing from using cars to bikes.

It really is not difficult to get around on a bicycle and most distances that people travel are of less than three miles. There are very few people who have never learnt to ride a bike, but many are scared to go on the roads because of excessive traffic speeds.

A very simple step to start encouraging people to get on their bikes would be to lower speed limits to 20 mph. If this is done all over the city, not just in small isolated areas, it will have a huge impact, as can be seen from other places where it has worked.

The sooner we start taking small, inexpensive, but extremely effective steps such as this, the greener and safer the city will become and the more Birmingham can appear to be aspiring to become an eco-metropolis.

Joe Peacock, Balsall Heath