IT’S 600 metres long, costs £33m and would take traffic off the streets of Oxford, according to one Headington man.

Noel Hodson is proposing digging a new Headington tunnel after becoming frustrated at a 45 minute trip to get a mile from the bottom of Headley Way to his home in Brookside.

Mr Hodson claims the scheme will cost £33m, but would re-route most of the 10,000 vehicle movements he estimated the John Radcliffe Hospital causes a day.

He is so convinced of his idea that he put together a diagram showing where it would run and emailed it to local councillors David Rundle and Ruth Wilkinson and Oxford East MP Andrew Smith.

He said: “It is based on real road tunnels. The depth would be not much more than 20 or 30 feet I would think.”

Oxfordshire County Council has been quick to scotch the plan, saying it could never afford to build a tunnel but Mr Hodson is hoping he might win public backing to push it through.

Mr Hodson claims the underpass could be built quickly by using moling, the same technique used to construct a road tunnel under Heathrow Airport to Terminal Five in less than a year.

The 68-year-old business consultant thinks his tunnel might even prove useful for the plans to build 150 houses on Ruskin Fields which now includes an access route linking the homes with the A40.

He said: “I don’t know how much traffic it would require but if the tunnel were at a more acute angle it could serve both the John Radcliffe and Ruskin Fields.”

But Audrey Mullender, principle of Ruskin College, said: “I think it is unlikely that we would consider building a tunnel as part of the Ruskin Fields development.

“It sounds too expensive.”

County councillor for Headington and Marston Altaf Khan said: “The traffic has been quite bad since the hospital’s expansion and there has been some discussion of a shuttle bus between the John Radcliffe and the Park and Ride car park.

“I have never heard of this proposal and if you look at the present climate a shuttle bus seems more realistic than this tunnel.”

Dr Tim Schwanen, of Oxford University’s Transport Studies Unit, said: “Tunnels are not usually a solution to the problem of traffic and that is probably because of the price. But it will probably not reduce traffic because a new infrastructure induces more traffic because people think there will be less traffic. So in the long run traffic levels will go up.”

But Hilary Rollin, of Highfield Residents’ Association, thinks the city needs to have more of a can-do attitude when it comes to traffic.

She said: “The traffic is just horrific and nobody is doing anything about it.”

Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for transport Rodney Rose said: “Regardless of whether or not this idea would work, there’s almost zero chance we would ever have the funding for it.”