Sir, Your report of the park-and-ride facilities proposed for Oxford's satellite towns, Abingdon, Bicester and Witney shows an unjustified optimism on the part of the city and county authorities.

Suppose I park my car in one of them. I then wait for a bus and board it. The bus starts and then promptly gets caught up in the same traffic jams along the A34 or A40, followed by the gridlock on Oxford's radial roads, just as my car would. Without even considering the risk of leaving the car all day in a large, unsupervised park, or the chance that the park-and-ride bus service will cease in the early evening, I can see no advantage. There are more satisfactory, long-neglected alternatives: there is an existing railway line to Bicester, most of the trackbed of the former line from Oxford to Witney and beyond, and a railway line as far as Radley on the way to Abingdon. These could surely be adapted to provide light electrified rail links that would provide rapid transport for passengers, with great benefit to the environment. However, I expect neither a county council controlled by a party whose "privatisation" of the rail system has led to tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money being spent to little public advantage, and which openly favours car use while still claiming "green" credentials, nor a Government that effectively ignores all surface transport problems, to take any notice of these views, but I would love to be proved wrong.

Andrew M. Pritchard, Oxford