Sir – The Frideswide Square plans (Report, October 21) raise some difficult issues. The real meat of this project is to create a congestion-free ‘shop window’ for development of Oxford’s West End, and that’s reasonable, but the quasi-science used to set this scene is unacceptable.

The county’s ‘Frideswide Square design approaches’ makes much of their 5/2010 ‘consultation’ concluding that ‘80 per cent of stakeholders are dissatisfied with the current layout of the square’, five per cent are satisfied. These stakeholders make an oddly unrepresentative mix; officers from council departments weight the outcome.

Market researchers were engaged (later?) to carry out 500 face-to-face interviews with the public around Frideswide Square, interviewing people according to their transport modes.

This study concludes very differently with 23 per cent dissatisfied and 48 per cent satisfied yet the county’s report claims “a relatively high level of dissatisfaction . . .”

These differences are not explained, the public users are discounted. Much of the design approaches report proceeds with anecdotal, loaded comments and subjective ‘ratings’, so can the outcomes be trusted?

Removing signals eases traffic flow but, to enable convenient walking and cycling, low-speed traffic is required. Cowley Road and Summertown projects do not deliver low speeds, can this be delivered here?

You report “the council had looked at successful junction schemes in Europe”, yet ‘Option 4’ designs show:

  • Wide, flared junctions, inconveniencing and endangering pedestrians and cyclists by encouraging speed
  • The roads leading into the square are shown continuing normally with no ‘threshold’ suggesting that the square is a special, low-speed place l
  • Overrun areas are shown as if this is a traffic-dominated place
  • Crossing places are shown away from desire lines
  • The council acknowledges that some cyclists will feel less safe and are likely to make use of the wider paved areas.

The designs have no ‘legitimisation’ for these cyclists which is guaranteed to lead to unnecessary conflict. Thus far the designs seem to have ignored the lessons from Oxford and ‘Europe’.

Graham Smith, Oxford