Sir, As a British Rail manager at the time I was fortunate enough to be professionally involved in the early 1970s in the formation of Oxford City Council’s ‘Balanced Transport Policy’.

Since then we have seen the county council sensibly adopt the basic principles underlying that policy. The result is that we have a public transport system in Oxfordshire of which we should all be proud.

It was, therefore, with some concern that I saw an article in the local press last month present an alarmist view of a ‘hit list’ of bus routes threatened with closure which included the 233 bus service between Woodstock-Witney-Burford. One of my present roles as a town councillor is to act as the transport representative for Woodstock with the county council, and I can assure your readers that there is absolutely no possibility of any cuts to this service. The opposite is the case.

Our county councillor for this area and leader of OCC, Ian Hudspeth, has sensibly been advocating the potential of this bus service as a means of alleviating congestion on the A40 by capitalising on the present frequency of rail services at Hanborough.

Together with him, I shall be pressing for improved frequency of the bus service between Woodstock and Witney, not reducing it, in order to develop the potential of transfer to rail.

Brian Yoxall
Green Lane
Woodstock