OUR county council took 10 months to remodel Frideswide Square. For £6.4 million of our money, we deserved a design that would anticipate traffic increases, either seasonally for sales and Christmas shopping or long-term with the redeveloped Westgate.

Clearly it did not. When the vastly enlarged Westgate Centre reopens on October 24, we face a set of traffic measures that cast doubt on OCC’s foresight.

They include temporary traffic signals for Frideswide Square. In 2015 decluttering the square was meant to help traffic. How is the opposite meant to help now? And OCC will suspend a bus stop more than a mile south of Westgate, believing extra traffic would otherwise choke Abingdon Road. It is the Chatham Road northbound stop.

Without it, bus passengers must walk to stops at either Canning Crescent, which has no shelter, or Lincoln Road. Canning Crescent and Lincoln Road are up to 350m from the homes of passengers who use Chatham Road.

To able-bodied people that may not seem far. But please consider people with disabilities, or with a baby buggy, or managing small children. Why must the Chatham Road stop be suspended? Because it is between the traffic signals for Weirs Lane and the pelican crossing by Northampton Road?

If so, why not synchronise controls of the two sets of signals to minimise traffic bunching and thus let the bus stop stay open? And how long will these “temporary” measures last? Six days? ‘Til Christmas? The January sales? Or has OCC yet to decide?

HUGH JAEGER

Chairman, Bus Users Oxford

Park Close, Oxford