Sir – Bus Users Oxford welcomes the plan to replace Botley Road railway bridge in 2017. For decades, bus operators have had to buy special low-profile double-deckers to negotiate the bridge safely.

Your archives include photos of several accidents when a driver forgot he had a full-height bus, drove down Botley Road and his bus either got stuck under the bridge or tore its roof off.

In 2017 the road under the bridge will be deepened. Bus operators should at last be able to use full-height double-deckers throughout Oxford. A bigger, better Oxford rail station has been planned since the 1930s. A 1940s plan proposed a station with at least six platforms on the GWR site, integrated with a 30-bay bus station on the LMS site. But nothing was done other than widening the bridge from four tracks to five. The station forecourt is too small for buses from all parts of Oxford to serve it. Stops in Frideswide Square are over 200 metres from the station entrance: too far for some passengers with disabilities and hard on passengers with heavy luggage, shopping or small children.

Redeveloping the station on its current site may include moving buses to a new larger forecourt in what is now the station car park south of Botley Road. This would increase walking distances for those buses that terminate at the station.

In 2005-2006 Arup presented options for a bigger Oxford rail station. They included either enlarging the current station or building a new one at Oxpens with a larger, integrated bus hub. Oxpens would have cost more because it required new signalling, but now Network Rail will re-signal through Oxford anyway.

Oxford Civic Society therefore argues that Oxpens is better value as well as better integrated.

Network Rail has yet to justify why it disagrees.

Hugh Jaeger

Chairman, Bus Users Oxford