THE proposal for an estate extension to Barton, plans for which you published, has attracted a lot of criticism, especially the new bus and cycle flyover into Marston. While being nowhere as clever as the planners and experts, it would seem to my simple brain that a great deal of money and disruption could be saved by a simple solution.

At the western end of the planned development there are fields between the site and the Elsfield road.

I believe that a large amount of the land north of the bypass and around Elsfield is owned by Oxford University colleges and, if this is the case, surely as a quid pro quo for recent planning decisions in their favour (against public opinion), they could be persuaded to sell a strip, maybe 75 feet wide, for a reasonable sum and a road could be constructed from the development to the Elsfield road. This would have many advantages.

Firstly, those at the western end of the development would not need to go all the way back up through the estate and through the established Barton estate, causing even more congestion at the Green Road roundabout. Secondly, the traffic leaving via the Elsfield road would have use of the existing infrastructure (Marston fly-over and slip road access) with no new cost, apart from new markings to allow vehicles crossing the flyover to turn right on to the north carriageway of the bypass.

This way, traffic would be able to go from the new estate into Marston, to Elsfield and Islip, to Kidlington, Eynsham and North Oxford, without using the Green Road roundabout. Would this not be better than a new flyover and buses going through the Foxwell Drive and Burrowmead Road area? This would work at far less cost.

I look forward to hearing from the experts why this is so ridiculous.

DEREK SMITH London Road Headington