Sir – Your front page article (March 19) highlighting the problems of non-staff parking at the Oxford University Hospitals Trust is appropriately placed as a major issue affecting Oxford.

Not only is it a waste of the public’s time, but leads to great stress at a time when many of those affected are already stressed to the limit. Like Sir Peter Morris, I attended a meeting at the John Radcliffe a week ago and spent 45 minutes on site trying to find a parking place, but unlike Sir Peter I was unable to simply turn around and go home as I was chairing the meeting.

To read that the problem, as seen by the city and county councils, is actually a positive rather than a danger and that it has in some way in their eyes been of benefit is extraordinary.

One way to avoid the extra traffic due to presence of the hospital in a urban area would be to provide a road directly to the John Radcliffe Hospital from the almost adjacent A40 Northern Bypass, a suggestion I and others have made in the past but which has been ignored.

Perhaps it is time to think again about the cost v benefit of the frustrating parking situation, and to look at a radical solution, such as a direct access road.

The benefit to the OUHs by the increased income from parking fees is just one further positive in this equation.

Dr Michael Ward
Oxford