Criminal negligence

Introducing extra new blood into an existing system runs the risk of thrombosis, though in Oxford's case users of the city's arteries already suffer quite severe symptoms of the disease every day.

Surgeons can insert a stent to open up a blocked artery, equivalent to destroying existing dwellings and other buildings to broaden the carriageway, at huge expense, usually just relocating the bottlenecks. Alternatively, an internal bypass may be inserted.

Maybe this suggests how the extra "new blood" might be accommodated, that is, by building a tunnel.

The best way of using such a tunnel would be to install an electric tramway, to avoid pollution, and to provide efficient access to the many new developments, including the new Westgate Centre, and halt the wholesale movement of major businesses to the outskirts of Oxford. Having come within ten millimetres of being knocked down in Queen Street last Saturday by a combination of a bicycle and a bus, the phrase "criminal negligence" springs to mind when considering the failure of the city and the Westgate developer to come up with any credible solution either to free Queen Street from buses, or to accommodate the huge increase in traffic that will be required to realise the retail potential of the new centre.

In your editorial you wrote of a "vibrant new era". Were you thinking of the engines in all those stationary motor vehicles?

Andrew M. Pritchard, North Hinksey