The County Council has nearly a million pounds to spend on making The Plain roundabout cycle-friendly and to encourage a step-change increase in cycling.

For that kind of money you’d expect a car and bus underpass leaving the roundabout itself free for cyclists and pedestrians. But in reality, a sweet million soon dissolves when dropped onto a complicated streetscape like The Plain.

Cyclox hosted a public meeting 10 days ago to wheedle from cyclists what is so difficult about The Plain.

Andrew Smith, the local MP, and Craig Simmons, a leading Green councillor, were amongst the audience of 40, the full house indicative of what a problem The Plain is.

The main bugbear is getting into the right-hand lane after Magdalen Bridge (heading east) so that you can cross to Cowley and Iffley Roads. The sensible solution here is to have just one lane approaching the roundabout not two, so you wouldn’t have to look over your shoulder for ages waiting for a break in the traffic to get into lane.

An even more sensible suggestion would be to close the inner-ring road (Longwall Street/Parks Road) to through-traffic altogether.

This could be done for a couple of hundred quid by blocking Longwall Street anywhere along its length, just as Holywell and other adjacent streets have barriers. These would allow bikes to pass through but force drivers to access the colleges from one side of the barrier or the other.

Speaking as someone who regularly uses the inner-ring road riding a bike and driving a car, I think that the benefits for the city as a whole would be so great as to be well worth this inconvenience to drivers – myself included.

The thousands of cars jostling along the narrow medieval streets around The Plain spell danger for the 5,000 cyclists using the junction every day.

There have been 30 crashes leading to injuries in the past five years. Reported collisions are concentrated at the Cowley and Iffley Road entries.

At the Cyclox meeting, there was a clear call for segregation at the Plain, in other words completely separate paths for people on bikes. And while I don’t need segregation myself, I can see how necessary it is for the majority of those that use The Plain – and the many thousands that are too frightened to even try.

Oxford deserves better than The Plain.

Let’s hope the planners manage to spend that million pounds in ways that really do make The Plain cyclable for the least confident riders.