Sir - Letters appear in your paper from time to time extolling the virtues of a new road joining the A34 with the M40 in South Oxfordshire. These writers have not thought things through.

South Oxfordshire, particularly the area designated "Oxford Heights" is a beautiful natural area providing the priceless green setting for Oxford. Shotover Park itself is already surrounded by roads and the BMW works. To construct a new road within a five mile plus radius of Shotover would be curtains for the wildlife, which needs to be able to move about.

The effect of a new road would be to draw in new traffic, including freight traffic, from the South of England.

Oxfordshire County Council has said recently it is not environmentally acceptable to widen the A34. Still less can it be environmentally acceptable to drive major new roads through open countryside. Such a new road has nowhere to go. The M40 is already highly congested and accident bound. There is no point in feeding new traffic into this system.

David Cameron has said that the future for freight is rail. This would have the benefit of lightening the load of the A34 and keeping Oxfordshire green and clean. New research has shown the harmful effects on health of traffic fumes, eg permanent damage to the lungs of growing children; increase in heart disease in those living near motorways.

What Oxford needs is not to provide a dirty new road for the south of England. The county and other councils should be focusing on local needs ie to get people safely, cleanly and quickly into our fine city. Where are the light rail, tram and other clean and energy-efficient projects, which would provide for this need?

Gwendolen Birks, Wheatley