Sir – Each week I read in your pages new suggestions of how Oxford’s roads may be improved. We and those we elect are always propounding the perfect network which complements Oxford’s elegance and tranquillity.

But never do we stop to wonder how elegant the roadfront is behind the red-and-white trench warfare, or what tranquillity can penetrate the ear-cracking scream of stone saws or pounding of pneumatic drills. In my 12 years in Oxford it has never once been free of major roadworks.

It seems to me that most of Oxford’s roadworks are either ill-conceived — the eight different remodellings of Cornmarket and the repeated reworking of Longwall Street and Abingdon Road come to mind; superfluous — such as the bicycle-rollercoaster of Cowley Road or the pointless new pavement slabs that are covered in gum or shattered by kerb-mounting buses within a week; or wasteful, like almost every resurfacing and utility access — done ineptly, with no co-ordination between utilities, and taking so long you half expect to find a neo-Renaissance fresco left behind on the road.

Let us first do away with hip remodelling and cost-cutting contractors, focus on essential repairs only and consider: I learned in my degree that road damage follows a cubic function, so two ten-tonne lorries do a quarter as much damage as one 20-tonne lorry. I often look on in despair at the giant trucks clogging up George Street for 20 minutes as they attempt to manoeuvre, smashing bicycle racks and paving stones in their 100-point turns, and wonder why they were allowed into the city in the first place.

Fewer roadworks starts with less ‘improvement’, and lighter vehicles. Who knows, maybe my council tax bill would be lighter too.

Joss Knight, Oxford