Sir - So it has happened at last. After months of inadequate, unreliable service, the No 7 bus Barton-Kidlington is to be cancelled. The reason given is the (presumably temporary) roadworks in the High Street and Green Road roundabout.

While I am not in the least surprised that, when the going gets tough, the bus companies run away, this does raise other questions, for instance:

  • For whose convenience are bus services run?
  • Were any of the users of this service asked how they felt about the cancellation of the only bus that runs through the city centre before the decision was made?
  • Why was so little notice given of the cancellation?
  • Can anyone give me one good reason why I (and all other users of this bus) should not abandon buses altogether and drive to work, thus adding yet more vehicles to the chronically overcrowded A34 every day?

If the bus services were to start to provide buses where and when the public need them, at a price they can afford (adjusting timetables when necessary to accommodate such things as roadworks), perhaps then they could begin to call themselves a public transport system.

Or would it be easier for them to get rid of their problem by cancelling Oxford from the map and making everyone live and work somewhere else?

Guy Heathcliffe, Oxford