Councillor Chris Robins (Oxford Mail, May 28) seems to be labouring under various misapprehensions.

Oxfordshire County Council has done a lot of work exploring the case for a railway station at Kidlington, developing plans, seeking planning permission and so on.

However, providing a station is not sufficient in itself - it needs a train service, too.

At the moment, the local train service past Kidlington is very infrequent; and a new station would attract few extra passengers in those circumstances.

We are told by those in the rail industry that there is no track capacity available to increase the service, nor even to put extra stops at a new station in the existing service. The county council cannot solve these issues.

We are essentially no more than a consultee on rail services, and the basic decisions on services and track are made by the Department for Transport and Network Rail.

They are the people, not the county council, whom Mr Robins needs to convince of the case for an improved service, extra track capacity and a new station.

Inevitably, these schemes will have to take their place among the many other demands for extra investment in rail services, such as East-West rail link, track redoubling on the Cotswold Line and increasing the capacity of Oxford station, which the county council also strongly supports.

It also must be pointed out that the proposal for an eco-town at Weston Otmoor muddies the waters on the Kidlington railway station issue.

IAN HUDSPETH (Councillor), Cabinet Member for Transport, Oxfordshire County Council