Sir – The traffic lights at Frideswide Square are there to ration capacity for the long stretches of the day when the volume of motor traffic exceeds the capacity of the road system.

Frideswide Square is not the only bottleneck, and is not the worst one; the peak queues are not going to disappear just by turning the lights off, or installing roundabouts. Of course, the traffic would flow slightly better with the lights off at quieter times of day, but this would make conditions worse for pedestrians and cyclists.

The only way to actually reduce the queues is to persuade enough people out of their cars. Some people could be persuaded to cycle if they didn’t have to make that tricky manoeuvre under the railway bridge, but it would be far more effective if we could give a clear run to the buses.

At the moment, that’s practically impossible: the buses get held up in the queue for the junction.

One of the advantages of diverting the traffic into Becket Street (as we propose) is that the junction queue will be out of the way of the buses.

With proper management of the bus gate at Binsey Lane, it should be possible to give buses pretty much a clear run.

Frideswide Square is an opportunity to make a significant reduction in the delays people endure every day on Botley Road, but that can only be achieved if we give priority to buses.

Richard Mann, Cyclox, Oxford