Sir, Just when buses and public transport should be expanding their services to provide a real alternative to the car, I am dismayed to see yet another bus cut the No. 14 no longer runs to the Churchill Hospital via Brookes University, terminating instead at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

The Churchill Hospital entrance is a good walk up from the nearest bus route (Old Road), certainly for anyone sick, elderly or with young children. It beggars belief that this important hospital campus link should have been abolished. Added to this, there are a large number of hospital flats Chartwell House sited at the Churchill. Their residents enjoy restricted parking rights and, in any case, many of them are nurses and other staff recruited from overseas to help fill the acute medical staff shortages in this area, many of whom don't drive or own a car.

How can we expect to retain such staff if they find no decent public transport system from where they live to where they work? Not everyone can cycle. No surprise then that large numbers of these workers gravitate to London, where transport is relatively much easier.

The Brookes students likewise are deprived of bus links to either hospital, as are the residents of Headley Way above the JR roundabout. The one bus that did serve this area, the No. 10, no longer runs up Headley Way in the evening, raising a safety issue for its residents returning home late. No doubt Oxford Bus Company and Stagecoach would argue that these service cuts are justified by cost. But lack of demand does not mean no demand, and the less frequent a service, the less it will be seen as reliable and therefore used.

Sally Servian, Former resident of Chartwell House, Oxford