Sir – £1.5m, Mr Keith Slater’s estimate of the cost of congestion following the lorry accident at the Kennington roundabout (Report, November 12), is bad enough, but it is dwarfed by the £60m, or more, that congestion costs Oxford’s commuters each year (40,000 commuters x 300 days x 1 wasted hour/day x £5/hour).

And how many accountants, lawyers and professors value their spare time so cheaply, let alone business journeys?

Much of this could be avoided if Oxford had a rapid transit rail system to cut our journey times and avoid congestion, linking existing park-and-ride sites, universities, schools, shopping centres, hospitals, rail stations and major suburbs.

No rail service for Grove? Why not take a lesson from Paris’s RER system, or German S-bahns, and have a rail service from Wantage via Grove, Milton Park, Didcot, Culham, Radley, Kennington, Oxford (moving the station to the Oxpens to provide full interchange with city bus services), Water Eaton, and Islip to Bicester, mainly using existing lines?

It might be possible to include Abingdon, and possibly other centres, on spurs. Apart from the savings in journey times and freedom from congestion, there would be huge reductions in carbon footprints.

None of these changes require new technology. They are a challenge for the county council to adopt as part of their Local Passenger Transport 3 strategy for 2011-2030.

Dr Andrew M. Pritchard, North Hinksey