Sir – I read with dismay the article about the trial closures of Lime Walk and Latimer Road at their junctions with London Road (Report, September 3).
This is another knee-jerk reaction by our council to a pressure group obsessed with its own self-importance.
Mr Anthony Swift’s statement “the cars come down here in excess of 50mph” is ludicrous in the extreme and so typical of a statement exaggerated to emphasise a problem.
In such a confined space, 30mph can seem like 50mph. I am one of the road users who contribute to the 70 per cent of through-traffic that has made Latimer Road a rat-run and I don’t mind admitting it.
By doing so, I am relieving the terrible traffic congestion at the major intersection of London Road and Windmill Road further up. I work in Sandfield Road, and every day I witness drivers using the Sandfield Road/Woodlands Road rat-run to avoid the junction with Headley Way.
This problem is repeated many times at numerous locations around Oxford.
How many residents of Latimer Road and Lime Walk can honestly proclaim to have never used a short cut anywhere else in order to speed up a journey? Oxford has a terrible traffic problem and closing side roads is not going to help alleviate it, it simply moves the problem elsewhere.
Every time we use our cars, we each contribute to the problem — if we choose to cause it, then we need to share it.
Choosing to push the problem elsewhere when we are done with it and pretending it doesn’t exist is selfish arrogance in the extreme.
Andrew Matheson, Headington
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