The Issue in Tuesday’s Oxford Mail asked should a second Oxford-London Rail link be built?

The answers for and against provided some strong and mostly true views from each camp.

Taking neither an anti-rail or road view, however, I think a more pragmatic answer is required.

Paul Withrington is correct; this project is unaffordable in the current climate, if it ever was.

Network Rail, who are funding this project, are paying for it on what the rail industry calls its “credit card”

That’s to say it’s the taxpayer that is ultimately borrowing this money, nothing unusual about that, but when times are hard, shouldn’t this sum of money be spent on something that is of wider benefit to all rail users, not just those commuters bound for London?

The primary function of this project is to enable taxpayer-subsidised Chiltern Railways to extract revenue from London-bound commuters who currently use First Great Western services, again taxpayer subsidised. As Mr Withrington says, no wonder the nation is bankrupt.

Not that all rail investment is bad. Hugh Jaeger is correct, Kidlington and North Oxford do need a rail station that is within easy reach.

Yet despite the fact that such a station has long been proposed and could be built on the Banbury-Oxford rail line at a fraction of the cost of what is proposed at Water Eaton, no commercial case has ever been made to build one.

Modest stations at Water Eaton or Pear Tree and Redbridge should all be built long before this Chiltern project gets a penny spent on it.

Mr Jaeger says that High Wycombe, Milton Keynes, Aylesbury and Oxford are linked only by road; the last three still will be when Chiltern’s project is complete.

True, they may be if East-West Rail is ever built, but with all this money being spent on a double-track curve at Bicester to link to the Banbury-Marylebone line, will it ever happen?

East West Rail with a curve in open country at Claydon would connect Oxford with Aylesbury, Milton Keynes and High Wycombe and provide an emergency alternative route to London. That is a project worth investing in.

However, none of this is practical unless construction costs and rail operators’ subsidy can be substantially reduced.

I would urge all residents in and around Launton Road in Bicester to make a noise at the public inquiry into this project currently taking in Oxford. It will certainly register with them for years to come, if they do not.

Fortunately, I am well out of earshot.

Colin Morris, Lyneham Road, Bicester