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A Taunton man has come up with an innovative solution to the town^s congestion problems - a light railway system.

Business entrepreneur Simon Chan has proposed a system similar to London^s Docklands light railway, which would run between Taunton Railway Station and surrounding areas including Wellington, Bridgwater, Norton Fitzwarren and Staplegrove every 15 minutes.

Mr Chan, who runs IT firm Candac, in Kingston Road, has set up a Facebook group to support the plans. He said: ^Heavy rail may generally be faster but the advantage of light rail is it can have more trains running and be faster between stations like the London Underground. It would be greener and more sustainable than introducing more buses. Developments like Project Taunton are very ambitious with what they want to achieve and we are going to have more cars when Firepool is built up making the Station Road area difficult to get into. Our campaign has already attracted over 100 supporters. Taunton once had a tram network ^ we will never know what could have been achieved had it remained. A lot of the infrastructure is already there so we^re not proposing something unrealistic.^

A spokesman for the Somerset County Council, which is responsible for highways and transport, said: ^This form of transport is an expensive option and we don^t have the available funding for such a project. We know that a large proportion of the traffic in the town travels less than two miles and so we would prefer to encourage more cost-effective transport solutions such as taking the bus, walking and cycling.^

"....Taunton once had a tram network ^ we will never know what could have been achieved had it remained. A lot of the infrastructure is already there so we^re not proposing something unrealistic.^