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I write in connection with your report about the proposal to reduce the number of London coaches travelling along High Street, Oxford (Oxford Mail, May 3).

Colleges claim that students have to "endure 24-hour noise and pollution".

Have they forgotten what Oxford was like when the High was open to all vehicles?

And what about the colleges along Banbury and Woodstock Roads, or Worcester Street, where the traffic is constant?

The fact is that one quickly learns to 'tune out' routine background noise, just as I did growing up close to a railway, and today living on a bus route.

But of more concern is your report of Graham Jones, of the High Street Business Association, saying: "There is absolutely no need for all the London coaches to come into the city centre.

"They could start from Redbridge and pick up passengers at the Thornhill park-and ride.

"People from Witney could get a London bus from Pear Tree or Water Eaton."

It appears that Mr Jones doesn't travel by coach and assumes that everyone getting the coaches drives to a pick-up point.

On the contrary, the majority of coach users want to get into the city, either as visitors, or because they live within the ring road, or want an on-going connection from the coach station.

We should be encouraging the use of public transport.

I (and many others) use the coach to commute to London every day, in my case from near Oxford Brookes University.

Should my wife get up at 6am just to drive me to Thornhill park-and-ride at Headington?

What about the increase in road use and waste of petrol?

Those who live outside Oxford already use park-and-ride, whether they come from Witney, Kidlington or Abingdon, or they get a bus into the coach station.

And what about commercial self-interest?

The logic of Mr Jones's suggestion is that the coach station should be banished from town altogether.

It's bad enough that we have a train station 10 minutes' walk from the city centre.

I suggest his association might come to rue the day he suggested making it harder for people to get into Oxford.

STUART HATHAWAY Derwent Avenue Headington Oxford

3:52pm Friday 9th May 2008

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