I WAS the first person in Oxford publicly to oppose the Northern Gateway. In December 2008, Cllr Goddard announced and welcomed the project, and your sister paper published a letter in which I opposed it as bad for traffic and the environment.

Since then John Goddard has made a u-turn, Labour is promoting the Gateway but it remains the city council’s biggest and worst policy to degrade Oxford’s economy and environment. Neither link roads nor “remote park and ride” outweigh the folly of siting 3,000 jobs on a ring road where three trunk roads meet.

Oxford pioneered park and ride, thus limiting congestion and emissions in the city centre. But Park and Ride is only half-way to sustainable transport.

Its sites attract daily peak hour congestion, delaying all traffic including buses. Witney-Oxford buses S1 and S2 are commercially successful but A40 traffic makes them slow and unreliable at peak times. A Park and Ride would not reduce A40 queues at Eynsham and could increase them. It could cost £2-3 million to build, and would sterilise acres of land under asphalt.

Bus Users UK says traffic could be reduced sooner and better at less cost. Increase local buses enough to be “feeder routes” to the S1 and S2. Increase Witney-Woodstock bus 242 enough to connect with Cotswold Line trains at Hanborough. Perhaps subsidise extending one Gold bus an hour to Burford. Instead the county plans reducing local buses throughout West Oxfordshire. No new park and ride can mitigate the harm in that.

HUGH JAEGER Media Representative bus users UK Oxford Group Park Close Oxford