TRANSPORT data service INRIX says traffic congestion cost UK motorists £30.8 billion in 2016. Its huge survey of 38 countries says the UK is the fourth most congested developed nation on Earth.

Decades of road building show only that traffic expands to fill whatever roads are provided. Neither electric cars nor driverless pods can change that. Electric cars will minimise emissions but waste just as much road space. Driverless pods could reduce demand for parking space but increase the amount of vehicles driving around empty.

The cheaper answer is to use existing road space better by increasing cycling and public transport. Reopening closed railways and stations, building bus lanes and safe cycle lanes next to congested trunk roads, and funding bus services to villages that need them would cost far less than enlarging roads and building new ones.

Oxfordshire County Council wants bus lanes on the A40, but only between Eynsham and Duke’s Cut.

Regrettably, it wants to dual the A40 between Eynsham and Shore’s Green. And both Oxford City Council and Nicola Blackwood MP want a destructive new motorway between Abingdon or Didcot and the M40.

Eric Sidebottom (Letters) wants the A34 to be made a motorway, the A40 dualled west of Witney and the Cutteslowe and Wolvercote roundabouts replaced with bridges or tunnels.

All that would cost billions. Were such sums invested in expanding Oxfordshire’s rail and bus networks instead, there could be enough left over to turn Oxford’s busiest bus routes into tramways as well. Everyone, including drivers, would benefit.

HUGH JAEGER Chairman, Bus Users Oxford Park Close, Oxford