Your report of the petition, asking for changes at The Plain, presented to the County Council (July 4) includes Cllr Nimmo Smith’s revealing response.

He says that ‘other road users would certainly lose out’ if benefits for cycling were included. He seems to suffer the loss of memory shared by the designers of this scheme. It was a bid for Government cash from the ‘Cycle City Ambition Grant’. If the scheme has practically no ambition for cyclists, coupled with a clearly inappropriate spend on stone footpath paving, it follows that it’s a waste of money.

He claims that making changes, for the benefit of anyone cycling, would impose considerable delays on bus passengers.

Is he blind to the reality that for many people cycling, or considering cycling, it is buses and coaches which impose the greatest risks? And whilst there are many buses at the Plain is it not the fact that a great percentage of ‘vehicles’ are cyclists?

Rather than imposing delays for bus users the proposals, made by those committed to cycling as a transport mode, would ease bus movements by clarifying ‘safe paths for cycling’. No additional space is required, nor cost. But if Mr Nimmo Smith is correct that a cycling provision would delay buses, it implies that even the dotted-lines proposed for cyclists are in fact required for buses to overrun.

The scheme he proposes seems designed to endanger cyclists, at a cost of nearly a million pounds. Is this madness?

Graham Paul Smith
National Councillor, CTC (Cyclists Touring Club)
Western Road
Oxford



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