Sir – Oxfordshire’s Local Transport Plan is currently out for consultation. It includes a very instructive diagram on page 26 illustrating the main road network in the county. Roads are coloured according to the degree of congestion in the morning rush hour, with the most congested roads – those that are over-capacity – coloured in red.

There is one location in the county where all of the roads that converge on it are coloured red, in other words they are all already over capacity. It is clear that major transport improvements are needed here even before any further growth in traffic is taken into account.

However, this location is also the site of the so-called Northern Gateway. The city is proceeding with a scheme for up to 9,000 new jobs here which simple common sense suggests will lead to gridlock.

A further document, the North Oxford Transport Strategy, was prepared to support the Northern Gateway Plans. It seems to suggest that the business park will result in about 1,800 extra journeys to work daily and that about half of these will be by car. This number of additional journeys each day will undoubtedly cause chaos. However it still seems very low when compared with the number of jobs.

How do 1,800 extra journeys correspond to 9,000 extra jobs? Has the council really done its sums? The results will be bad even if it has, but disastrous if it hasn’t.

John Batchelor
Kidlington