Yet another complicated, and expensive, traffic-light scheme is being proposed on the Oxford ring road – this time at Heyford Hill Roundabout (Oxford Mail, May 20) – when a simple solution is what is really required.

Traffic lights cause traffic to stop, when what you really want to do is keep it moving.

Creating a new lane down to the Abingdon Road roundabout will just give traffic somewhere to ‘park’.

The cause of the bottleneck, as any regular commuter will attest, is traffic bound for the southbound A34.

Make the left lane at the Abingdon Road roundabout go straight through, and the same at Hinksey Hill down on to the A34, and the traffic will flow.

To ease congestion at Sainsbury’s, create a different exit from their car park on to the Southern Bypass, close to the Rose Hill roundabout.

The left-hand lane on this road should only turn into Sainsbury’s or on to the A4074.

Westbound from the A4074, the left-hand lane needs to be a straight-through lane, and the same with the traffic bound for Rose Hill from Abingdon. There is no need for a new lane there – just make the left-hand lane straight-through.

Bring the right-hand traffic lane from Abingdon bound for Sainsbury’s and the A4074 forward to allow for easier merging, and do the same from the right-hand lane of the A4074.

These are all low-cost solutions. A bit of white paint is all that is required.

However, I regret I do not have a computer generated model like the traffic light companies do (and we know how reliable their forecasts are from the debacle at the Cowley Tesco roundabout).

All that is needed is a simple sketch on the back of an envelope.

It seems to me the county council and Sainsbury’s are wasting money on an over-complicated solution when a simpler one could be tried first at low cost.

C R Woodley, Holland Road, Abingdon