Sir – I think that your correspondent Graham Smith misunderstood my letter.

I am concerned about the people who might end up in noisy polluted shoeboxes alongside the new “boulevard”. People who will be expected to mix, as pedestrians, cyclists and drivers, with a congested main road originally designed to be separate from them. The A40 might have been “detrunked” but it is still busy and is an obvious choice for drivers trying to divert when there are obstructions on parts of the A34 or M40, it does not need more local traffic, pedestrian crossings etc..

I am concerned about the trees on the A40, because they help to conceal the road from people around it. If you look at house prices or rents around Oxford it would appear that people choose to live in the quietest, leafiest area as near to the city centre as they can afford. If Mr Smith wants a bleak 1960s-style brutalist concrete desert with thousands of vehicles running through it, then he might find that he is the member of a tiny minority.

Bill Baxter, Old Marston