Sir – Our county council is a national leader in promoting buses — except in central Oxford, where it keeps dismembering what was once a simple, well-connected network.

In 2001, it banned buses from Cornmarket and sent them on a diversion so long, slow and commercially unviable — almost a mile from Carfax to Magdalen Street — that by 2005 it choked to death all routes that once linked High Street with Banbury Road.

In 2009, it removed five stops from Queen Street and put extra stops in Castle Street and St Aldates. This instantly congested St Aldates with too many buses. The west side of St Aldates now has too many stops on parts of its pavement that are too narrow for pedestrians and waiting passengers to share. Stops in Castle Street and St Aldates are useful but no substitute for those removed from Queen Street.

They are further from Cornmarket and Magdalen Street. Castle Street is too steep for many mobility-impaired people to manage. Now our county council wants to remove the remaining buses and one stop from Queen Street and squeeze them into Castle Street and St Aldates.

Ultimately it wants also to ban buses from Magdalen Street and George Street, divert them down the already-congested Beaumont and Worcester streets and put bus stops in St Giles. Stops in St Giles would be half-a-mile from those in St Aldates. Passengers not able-bodied enough to walk that far have no place in our county’s discriminatory policy.

And passengers burdened by heavy shopping, luggage or small children would be left to either struggle, give up, or go by car. The remaining buses in Queen Street cause no congestion and harm no one.

Removing them would make a bad problem worse. The desire to do so is not logical but pathological.

Hugh Jaeger, Bus Users UK Oxford Group