SIR, Jasmine Smith (Herald, December 4, Letters) is not quite correct in saying that the Long Wittenham bus service is stopping, although journeys on route 97 are being reduced from four to two per day in each direction.

Thames Travel trumpets the changes as “improvements” and the regularisation of the Abingdon-Didcot service is welcome, as is the new evening through service from Oxford via Steventon.

However it is the villages that are suffering. Culham village (including the parochial school) now has a two-hourly instead of an hourly service and buses to there from Abingdon now go on to Oxford via Berinsfield, instead of to Didcot.

There is, therefore, no service to the northern part of Sutton Courtenay, as all buses from Abingdon go via Drayton to the Triangle. The service from Oxford to Littlemore and Sandford has also been reduced with the amalgamation of routes 116 and T2/T3.

It is a pity that Thames Travel has been so high-handed in making these major changes seemingly without any consideration as to their effect on local communities. What is needed is more buses together with incentives to use them.

On Friday afternoon, it took me an hour to get by bus from Steventon to Abingdon and the queue from the Ock Street/Stratton Way junction tailed back almost to Steventon village. If more of these car occupants were on the buses, it would make a major difference to local traffic flow.

Michael Bloom, Withington Court,  Abingdon