The county council has its numbers wrong over the Magdalen Road controlled parking zone plans. Over recent days, some residents affected by the proposed Magdalen Road CPZ have been checking their streets for the accuracy of the council's designs.

The council’s stated premise is that in all streets the CPZ will deliver a minimum three-metre running lane (wide enough for both cars and emergency vehicles) while at the same time providing a minimum one-metre footway where they intend cars to be parked on the pavement.

Residents with simple tape measures have discovered that this is simply not physically possible in a number of streets.

This is bad enough but the process has also highlighted a more comprehensive flaw.

Throughout the zones, the council is also proposing that the marked-out parking bays will be 1.8m wide. Even discounting side mirrors, most modern cars are wider than this and will not fit.

This will result in two things: firstly, a risk of legitimate residents who park as carefully as they can being ticketed by over-zealous wardens with quotas to achieve. Secondly, whatever part of their car that sticks out will either eat into the footway or the carriageway. This means that even in streets where the council can fit their 1.8m bays in, this is no guarantee that this will deliver either a three-metre running lane or a one-metre-wide footway.

What further confirmation does the council need that its scheme is fundamentally flawed? Those who believe that this CPZ will improve things for pedestrians (and buggy/wheelchair users) might want to think again.

DOMINIC WOODFIELD, Silver Road, Oxford