Sir — Your headline about Frideswide Square last week will spread alarm and despondency, and not just among those who regularly pass through it on their ways to and from work.

Experience shows that congestion here rapidly spreads to the whole region. Why has work on the square suddenly become so urgent, after years of vacillation?
The last published design is still badly flawed, especially for cyclists and pedestrians, and in any case pre-dates the new emphasis on promoting alternative transport modes, active travel for health and the aim of making Oxford a premier “Cycle City”. Many of the square’s problems arise from a constant stream of buses and cars having to cross it to reach the station forecourt. Relocating the station and building a transport hub at Oxpens would remove this obstacle, decoupling it from the interchange between north-south and east-west traffic. Yet the proposals for replacing the station (at whatever location), or of providing a functional multi-mode transport hub are hardly mentioned.
Rebuilding the rail bridge, which would be cheaper if the new station were at the Oxpens, will inevitably bring huge disruption. It would surely make more sense to rebuild the bridge, the station and Frideswide Square at the same time, to minimise the disruption and its costs.
With potentially 40,000 people in the Oxford region spending an extra hour each day travelling, the cost of traffic disruption alone could be around £10m per month. Why extend the disruption unnecessarily by doing the work piecemeal? May I suggest that it is not “too early yet to provide information about traffic management”, but rather time to reconsider the whole project, with some joined-up thinking?
Dr Andrew Pritchard
Transport Group convenor, Oxford Civic Society
North Hinksey