Sir – Inconveniencing passengers is but one way to dismember a bus network. The other is to increase running costs per passenger mile until bus operators either truncate or abandon routes. In central Oxford, our county council does both.

City centres are logical termini for routes from other towns, but not for local routes within the city. These should run through: not only to link different suburbs but also to minimise the amount of city centre space used inefficiently for layovers or turning around. Such functions belong on the outskirts, leaving the centre free for movement. Truncating a cross-city route doubles the times per day that buses terminate and lay over.

Buses run only if economically viable. When the county closed Cornmarket, the buses’ cost increases did not end when operators abandoned through-routes around the council’s unworkable diversion.

Forcing operators to truncate routes significantly congested Magdalen Street East, slowed bus movements and thus increased operating costs even on other North Oxford routes that hadn’t been using Cornmarket.

Removing stops from Queen Street brought similar wasteful congestion to St Aldate’s: both for buses excluded from Queen Street, and for routes that were already in St Aldates.

Removing remaining buses from Queen Street would worsen this. Not only would more eastbound buses congest Castle Street and St Aldates, but buses from towns south of Oxford might have to terminate at Butterwyke Place. Linking ill-located, congested termini with Ann Spokes Symonds’s slow, low-capacity “little trains” would solve nothing. Each road can take only so many buses and stops. If each road bears its share, none need be overloaded. Keeping buses in Queen Street, restoring some to Cornmarket (as Nicholas Lawrence suggests) and maybe restoring routes to some other roads (as Richard Mann suggests) would better use city centre space, reduce congestion and restore efficiency.

Hugh Jaeger, Bus Users UK Oxford Group, Oxford