Residents are battling plans to turn a narrow Oxford street into a busy bus route to the John Radcliffe Hospital.

They fear the impact of buses on Osler Road ferrying patients and staff will ruin the street, which is part of the Old Headington conservation area.

They are also worried buses will not get through the street, which is clogged with parked cars.

Hospital managers said a bus route along Osler Road was one of the conditions when outline planning permission was granted for the £20m children's hospital and the relocation of services from the Radcliffe Infirmary.

It is part of the Headington and Marston Area Transport Strategy (Hamats), a five-year plan to tackle congestion and parking problems.

The hospital applied for planning permission to create the route, along with access to the hospital over a field which is also part of the conservation area.

Oxford City Council members for Headington, David Rundle and Stephen Tall, have launched the Keep Osler Road Special campaign, and are collecting signatures for a petition.

They said the plan was to have buses running up and down the road many times a day.

Mr Tall said: "I support sensible traffic solutions for Headington, but the idea of running hundreds of buses down this narrow residential street as any kind of solution is pie in the sky."

Stella Welford, of the Friends of Old Headington, said: "The carriageway would need to be widened and the pavements made narrower."

Resident Lesley Maddock, 81, of Osler Road, said: "This road leads into the conservation area and if they want to make it a bus route they will have to remove mature trees and alter a stone wall.

"You can't have residents' parking and 60-seater buses.

"At the moment we have a nursery school here. How would that survive with all these buses?"

Tony Joyce, chairman of the co-ordinating committee of Headington Residents' Associations, said: "I think the size of bus we have in Oxford is unacceptable in a street as narrow as this."

David Edwards, transport and planning manager for the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals, said: "Our planning conditions state we must allow for buses to get to our site from two places -- Saxon Way and Osler Road."

He said getting buses along Osler Road was a matter for Oxfordshire County Council.

Peter Mann, county council group manager for transport planning, said: "Investigation of the use of Osler Road to improve public transport access to the John Radcliffe Hospitals was included in Hamats.

"But we recognise a proposal to route buses along this road is contentious and this will be considered."