WHY are we being asked about proposals for closing Queen Street to buses when real information about the effects of the current blockage due to building/demolition operations will be available, and secondly, before the impact of the predicted 40 per cent increase in footfall at the new Westgate Centre can be assessed?

Closing Queen Street will make the existing connectivity between East Oxford (eg hospitals, Brookes University and the Old Road campus) and the West (rail station and the proposed Osney Mead developments) even worse.

Where is the logic in the choice of revised destinations for existing bus routes?

The proposed turning circle for buses at the junction of New Road and Tidmarsh Lane, already one of the most congested points in the city, and made more hazardous by the entrance to the Worcester Street car park, is inexplicable.

Previously I have suggested that the development of the Osney Mead estate should be accompanied by construction of the first stage of the county’s proposed Rapid Transit system from the west to the Oxpens/Rail Station.

Clearly any closing of Queen Street to buses will need to be accompanied by the extension of the Rapid Transit eastwards to Headington if reasonable journey times are to be achieved, and StAldate’s and Norfolk Street are not to be permanently jammed by phalanxes of buses.

About £500,000 is to be spent on a hypothetical Oxford-Cambridge Expressway, despite work going ahead on East-West Rail to achieve an even quicker journey.

International experts say that a technical assessment for a Rapid Transit route could be done for the same cost.

So far routes are just “being considered”. Shorter journey times are not seen as a priority, which will not reduce car use.

We need a Rapid Transit as soon as possible.

Dr A PRITCHARD
Laburnum Road, Oxford