Sir – You report that the Doric developers claim that their proposed redevelopment of Elms Parade will attract 12 million visitors a year.

That is about 33,000 a day. Obviously most of these visitors will have to come from elsewhere, and most will come by car. What will this do to the narrow, already crowded and congested roads in that area? Has the Vale of White Horse District Council made a full traffic assessment for the area? If so, what did they find? They owe it to the inhabitants of Botley to tell them.

If they have not made such an assessment, they need to proceed to do so immediately. There is a similar problem in North Oxford: the traffic consequences of the proposed Northern Gateway development.

At a recent meeting in Wolvercote, options for developing a safeguarded area of land were presented. These included the industrial development of 80,000 sq m of space. This could generate an enormous amount of traffic. But there has been no traffic impact assessment for the roads in North Oxford and in Oxfordshire around Oxford. The increased congestion could be very damaging. We need full traffic impact assessments before the councils proceed with their dreams of development in this area.

In both cases, assessing traffic impacts must take note of the likely effects of the Westgate expansion, which the city council is preparing to grant permission for next year.

If the Elms Parade expansion will attract 33,000 visitors, the £400m expansion of Westgate should attract two or three times as many. Here again we have no idea of what the effect will be on traffic throughout Oxfordshire. It will be major and it should be assessed, and should be acceptable to the people of this county, before the city proceeds to grant permission for this development.

M. Treisman, Oxford