BRITAIN learned 90 years ago that road building doesn’t solve congestion. From the Great West Road in 1925 to the £15-billion road building programme announced in 2014, study after study concludes new or enlarged roads increase traffic, and thus congestion, either there or somewhere else.

New research by Transport for Quality of Life for Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) finds three quarters of recent road building schemes have no economic benefit. And by increasing poisonous nitrous oxides (NOx) and sedentary cardependent living, road building harms public health.

Car-dependency undermines public transport. And ever-growing congestion delays buses. Hence buses are hit twice.

Roads harm habitats and biodiversity. They increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Dual carriageways takes more land than two-track railways, so building them emits more CO2.

And pro rata, cars and HGVs have a higher carbon footprint than trains.

New railways and tramways, however, increase bus use, not only on connecting routes but even on buses with which they compete.

And road traffic is reduced and flows better. Widening the A40 would help no-one but the contractors designing and building them.

A40 dualling would threaten rural buses that survived Oxfordshire County Council’s 2016 cuts, such as routes 11 to Freeland and Church Hanborough and 19 to Aston, Bampton and Clanfield.

Oxfordshire Count Council (OCC) admits it could add bus lanes to the A40 for half the cost of dualling it.

Yet it voted to dual three miles between Eynsham and Witney.

Only east of Eynsham will it build a bus lane, and that will not even reach Wolvercote roundabout.

Longer term, the Witney Railway needs to be reopened and extended to Carterton. Scotland recently reopened the 35-mile Borders Railway for £350 million. OCC’s claim that reopening just seven miles of railway from Yarnton to Witney would cost £285 million is thus a wild exaggeration.

Improving public transport helps everyone. Roadbuilding helps noone.

HUGH JAEGER

Chairman Bus Users Oxford

Park Close, Oxford