Sir – The congestion around the Wolvercote and Cutteslowe roadworks is terrible, and it is good that the county is consulting on possible long-term solutions.

The number of people travelling into and around our city has risen over the last decade, and the improvements to trains, buses, walking and cycling haven’t been able to keep up. So more people are driving, and congestion is getting worse.

But focusing on a particular problem corridor or junction isn’t the best way to tackle this. What we really need is more people to use public transport. We can provide new bus or train services to try to persuade people out of their cars, or we can concentrate on getting people to switch who already have decent public transport.

There are still thousands of people driving to work in the city centre – why do we allow this? If we remove those cars from the roads, there would be much less congestion at the junctions on the edge of the city. I think we need a concerted campaign to pressure the university and colleges, and others with workplace parking in the city centre, to give them up.

We could probably find a way to stop people driving, by charging them, or blocking off roads, but we’ve already made it difficult enough for legitimate business access. It really isn’t necessary to drive to work in central Oxford. A world-class university should know better.

Richard Mann
Oxford