Sir - The M40 junction 9 and the A34 are seldom out of the news, your paper is used to reporting the trials and tribulations of this under engineered and heavily congested piece of highway infrastructure.

You recently reported that the junction 9 improvement scheme has been shelved and the Highway Agency no longer considers it to be a priority.

Apart from the budgeting inadequacies of the Highways Agency, they always find estimating and funding to be a black art, assessment of non priority shows a breathtaking and surreal lack of knowledge about the real situation along this stretch of road.

The A34 is regularly blocked with heavy polluting traffic and there has been significant loss of life on the A34 between junction 9 and Oxford within the last 12 months. Since your piece of original reporting on April 6, there have been four significant accidents on the A34 and the B430, which is regularly used as a rat-run for fast congested traffic.

The junction 9 improvements would have made a significant difference to how traffic is fed from the A34 on to the north bound M40 and its cancellation is a grave mistake. Your newspaper reported that additional measures will be put in place to reduce rat-running traffic along the B430 through the villages of Weston-on-the-Green, Middleton Stoney and Ardley. This is to be welcomed.

Effective and vigorously enforced speed limits and weight limits are required and the situation needs monitoring.

Norman Machin, Weston-on-the-Green