I HAVE recently had the immense misfortune of having to drive several times via Oxford Station, including navigating ‘Death Alley’ – Hythe Bridge Street – where strangers to our ancient city are herded with their suitcases on to two-foot wide pavements; are forced by sheer numbers to step in front of enraged, queueing drivers and maddened cyclists – all jostling for space at the pinch points on the canal bridge and all desperately seeking a terminal breath of oxygen from the most polluted air in Europe.

Squeezed, two-way traffic – cars, vans, lorries, coaches, cyclists and pedestrians – can neither get to or from the station, regardless of the approach routes chosen. Today I joined a 20-minute, nearly stationary queue headed towards the station.

I know (because I spent eight years with a top team trying to develop the old railway station coal yards, including designing traffic flows) that there is plenty of space to separate walkers from cyclists from cars from buses and to banish gridlock.

Who or what group of moronic sociopaths, masquerading as traffic engineers, were paid to design the present chaos?

Do they ever negotiate their own crazed system? Do they take responsibility for the asthma attacks, shortened lives and loss of productivity of all the delayed, desperate travellers?

Can we identify the culprits and hold them in a public area where we, the people, can express our opinions of their skills and inform them that gridlock at the station backs up traffic throughout the city – tripling pollution?

NOEL HODSON, Brookside, Oxford

 

  • Today’s letters


Want to give your opinion? Email letters@oxfordmail.co.uk