Sir – Re: Shores Green. Before the Campaign to Protect Rural England and their cohorts get too excited in their orgy of self congratulation, perhaps they should road test their own proposal.

Many drivers who would use any new connection to the town centre drive small, modestly-powered cars: they suit their requirements. Such people may happily and harmlessly use minor roads and not have used a motorway or trunk road for years.

At the Oxford end of the dual carriageway, there is a single-track crossover, which appears to be public but will not take much traffic. If this crossover is used for the purpose of the test, it will provide a similar experience, albeit without a take-off lane but a take-off lane will not improve the experience that much.

You join the carriageway about half a mile east of where the Shores Green junction will be and you have to cope with very fast moving traffic.

Indeed, there is an element of pent-up frustration being released here, after the slow section from Wolvercote to the beginning of the dual carriageway.

Lorries are limited to 40 mph on that stretch.

Those confident drivers with powerful cars will see it as nothing more than something needing great care.

Those in small cars will find it thoroughly intimidating and will regard the jams of Oxford Hill as the lesser of two evils. That will defeat the object of the exercise.

The Shores Green project might work if the whole of the A40 were dual carriageway from Oxford to Gloucester, meaning that the traffic would be more settled before approaching Witney and not in fear of delays further up the road.

The Cogges link proposal was a flawed project but, as I said some months ago, it was the least unsatisfactory of a bad bunch.

The UK does not use huge numbers of vehicles relative to the population compared to most European countries and the developed world.

The essential problem is that England has one of the highest population densities in the world — almost 1,100 people to the square mile — over 1,600 per square mile in this area. People cannot live at that sort of density without causing environmental degradation — and congestion.

Ralph Ingham-Johnson, Pens Close, Witney