LORD Adonis’s warning of transport gridlock in The Times should certainly be heeded by Oxfordshire authorities.

There is very little in the way of fully funded transport schemes even to address current Oxfordshire problems.

Even without planned developments, the Oxfordshire Growth Board predicts severe overloading on the A34, A40, A338 and A4074 as well as problems on many other county routes.

Add in the additional 100,000 homes (a massive growth of 37 per cent) that the districts are having to accommodate in their Local Plans, the consequences for road conditions will be even more dire.

The county has bid for some Government funds and the Local Plans include long wish lists of transport schemes but nothing significant has been secured even to address the existing problems.

So what should be the way forward? Firstly, the scale of the threat could be reduced by adopting the lower housing forecasts proposed by the Government.

Secondly, clearly identifying the infrastructure needs and linking them to the development proposals.

This will be an important outcome of the recently initiated Countywide Infrastructure Study.

This aims to identify future transport needs.

The problem is that the results of the study are likely to follow on the adoption of Local Plans rather than informing them.

Hence there will be further delay in the identification of infrastructure needs.

Also, the opportunity to adjust the development proposals in the interests of better and more efficient (i.e. cheaper) infrastructure arrangements will be lost.

Surely, there is a strong case for adopting the lower housing targets of some 25 per cent growth and joining up the planned infrastructure study with the development proposals in an interactive way to devise the most efficient sustainable land use and transport arrangement for Oxfordshire?

ROGER WILLIAMS Brill