I HAVE just read Tony Greenfield’s letter re Frideswide Square and the apparent lack of sensible planning in allowing safe movement of all traffic including cyclists and pedestrians.

Wouldn’t it have been so simple to have marked cycle lanes on the wide paved areas so that everyone knew who goes where? The narrow carriageway is unsafe for cyclists and from what is said the bus laybys are not wide enough.

There is a bottleneck in Worcester Street and Beaumont Street. Nothing whatsoever has improved in this area. It’s more than £5m spent just to make Frideswide a prettier place when one is stuck in traffic.

With regard to the access to Headington scheme, the planners should forget it. To spoil such a lovely road removing all the mature trees etc to have a bus lane just a few hundred yards long is absolutely stupid. Cyclists do ride on the narrow pavements now and to place a cycle lane next to the carriageway will not change things.

Sometime ago there was a dream to put a tunnel under Oxford’s High Street for the buses.

If the planners and engineers think such a scheme is possible why can’t they put a tunnel from the A40 to the JR Hospital as it is the siting of the hospital that is the problem.

It’s all very well for these not-fit-for- purpose officials to spoil areas which won’t make a ha’peth of difference to traffic flow to Headington. None of them probably live in the area.

MICHAEL CLARKE
Lewell Avenue, Old Marston, Oxford