If the on-going roadworks in several parts of the city and its immediate surroundings taking place at the same time – or the pelican crossing still turned on between the temporary traffic lights in Worcester Street – wasn’t a clue that our county council highways people could use some help in the common sense department, this ‘tunnel’ idea for busses running under the High should really finally give the game away shouldn’t it?

Rather than carving up great lumps of the local area’s existing byways and highways at a cost of millions of pounds, perhaps (in the case of allowing the buses to be more efficient) the two main bus companies could have been encouraged to change or alter some of their cross-city routes, routes which were probably put in place by the much older company which pretty much exists as Oxford Bus Company to this day.

At that time of course, both Cornmarket and Queen streets were not only open to all traffic, but to traffic that could pass both ways. OCC’s previous brilliant master plan, the OTS has of course put an end to all that once and for all.......maybe.

Surely it is easier and more cost effective to change the route of a fleet of steerable moving vehicles, rather than dig up the existing road network and cause months of total gridlock for all road users, buses and taxis included? I accept that the repairs on the London Road are well overdue, but they’re not (in their spokesperson’s words) taking place out of concern for the public by OCC, only out of concern of losing a central government handout.

David Williams, David Walter Close, Oxford

Today’s letters

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