Sir – I was interested to read Bob Wilson’s letter (April 22) regarding free-flowing traffic. How right he is to raise this issue.

You don’t need to be a traffic engineer to realise that traffic lights stop traffic in mid-flow, which in turn causes more congestion and thus more pollution.

What you do need is a degree of common sense and a concern for how best public money should be spent.

Until a few years ago there were no traffic lights at the roundabout junction of the A34 with Hinksey Hill and the southern ring road and there were no delays or congestion.

Since the traffic lights were installed there has been traffic backing up on to Boars Hill at peak times of up to two miles long.

When, on those rare occasions, the traffic lights don’t work due to a power failure, we are once again relieved from traffic queues and chaos. May I suggest strongly that it is far more appropriate and cheaper to spend the public’s money on repairing the many potholes that are now appearing on roads in and around Oxford thus ensuring the safety of cyclists who are all too regularly having accidents due to poor road maintenance and then ending up in the John Radcliffe Hospital for a couple of weeks, as my son did recently.

Paul Wooldridge, Boars Hill