IT IS good news that Oxford is to get a quality bus partnership, thereby ending the absurdity of two companies competing for the same traffic, with separate ticketing, routing and timetables.

The new hybrid Buses should also help reduce air pollution.

Question is, will this be enough? Oxford is a crowded place, and will get more so. Too many cars, too many buses.

The debate on the desirability of a tram network is one which needs to be taken forward, and requires some “outside the box” thinking.

Anyone who has visited a city with a tram network, new or old, will know the benefits. Faster, more comfortable, less polluting, cheaper to operate, and they bring huge benefits to local economies.

Britain lags behind the rest of the developed world, where tramways are being installed in smaller cities than Oxford.

Critics say that the expense and disruption of building tramways are too great.

If the network is built on existing narrow, overcrowded roads, where underground services have to be moved before you even lay a rail, they have a point. But it doesn't need to be like this.

Trams can run on existing rail lines – either by sharing tracks with trains, or by building tram tracks alongside. Trams can also use green spaces without destroying them.

Indeed, the tracks can be grassed over (apart from the rails themselves).

Modern technology even makes the overhead wires and masts unnecessary – they can be powered by underground cables using induction motors.

A basic, simple, tram network, using the railway line from Kidlington to Cowley, branching out from the station through the centre, to the John Radcliffe Hospital and thence to Barton and Thornhill, would capture a huge amount of traffic, serving four existing park and ride sites, and many traffic-generating areas.

Buses would then supplement it, and the network could be extended once established.

The city centre could become almost a car-free area while being much more accessible.

The difficult bit would be actually traversing the centre from the station towards St Clement’s.

A tunnel may be the answer, as far as Mansfield Road, where it would serve the science area, with an underground station at Carfax.

Ridiculous? There is already a tunnel from the city centre to Sandford almost big enough to drive a tram through. It transports sewage. Wake up Oxford.

Patrick Adams, Gibbings Down, Yarnscombe, Devon