We enjoy the county council’s thought-experiments for improving traffic movement into and through the centre of Oxford.

The experience of Croydon and Edinburgh show that trams are an extremely expensive option compared to the alternative – bus lanes.

Because the under-road services (water, gas, electricity, sewer and internet cables) cannot be allowed to reside beneath a tram line (because that makes access to them impossible), before tram rails can be laid all underground services have to be moved sidewise – at vast expense.

This is why the new Edinburgh tramline, for example, came out well over double the budget and five years late.

Today’s letters

It is generally accepted that Oxford’s policy of the past 40 years – making it hard for cars to come into the historic centre – was correct.

Rises in car ownership means that it is impossible for a city like Oxford to make adequate provision for cars because as soon as provision (such as car parking) improves, the number of cars coming in rises to new levels. This policy now needs to be extended to buses and coaches.

The current Oxford Parkway railway station project shows the way forward. As the suburbs expand and the number of visitors grows the ancient city centre becomes unequal to the task of coping with the volume of people coming in. So we should give up trying to make the centre ever more accessible but instead develop retail, offices (and railway stations) on the edge.

Barnaby Lenon, St John Street, Oxford

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