SINCE 12,000 homes proposed around Oxford on Green Belt and flood plain means about 24,000 extra cars, where are the plans that will actually reduce the traffic impact of new housing?

New estates also come with a guarantee of more delivery vehicles movements, more school run traffic, construction vehicles, utility vans and taxis. Since most employment of people living in these new peripheral estates will be in Oxford, congestion and already severe pollution on commuter routes can only get worse. Oxford City Council’s relentless policy of expanding land for employment in the city instead of for social housing and key worker housing does not help.

However, this is only part of the picture. Housing units completed in Oxfordshire by 2031 will probably be in the 40-45,000 range, although house prices and home completions are clearly beginning to decline so that may be an overestimate. Nothing in the County’s current Local Transport Plan will provide the bus, rail, walking and cycling investment level needed to stop our county’s major routes being strangled by traffic. The county cut to subsidised bus routes goes in the wrong direction; a dualled A40 does nothing to restrain traffic growth from West Oxfordshire into North Oxford; there is still no commitment to reopen the rail line to passenger services from Witney and Carterton through Oxford to Cowley and Wheatley.

It is bad enough that we have some of the very worst house prices and rents in the country in our county, in relation to our incomes.

But do we seriously want traffic expansion to blight larger areas of the county than it does already?

DR HAZEL DAWE Oxfordshire Green Party