SIR, Re: Network Rail’s proposed enforced closure of the A338.

The county council must refuse permission for the closure of the A338 for up to six months. The idea that the A34 could take another 6,000 vehicles during each rush hour would produce absolute carnage, while the economic damage to Oxfordshire would replicate that of the recession.

Bear in mind that Network Rail also insanely propose that the road bridges at Steventon, Denchworth and the A34 itself will be subject to similar simultaneous closures — or severe restrictions, at best.

People will pay with their lives if Network Rail are allowed to get away with this: the emergency services will be severely cut off from timely attendance to large areas of the county.

Unfortunately, Network Rail are answerable to no-one. They are not a public limited company: you cannot buy shares and attend AGMs to demand answers. The minutes of their meetings are not published. They are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Yet they are given up to £5bn of public money each year in vast subsidies and granted draconian powers not permitted to any other ordinary business. For that, a civil servant may attend board meetings.

Network Rail are at war with the rest of us: they have decided that rebuilding this bridge, rather than lowering the track to accommodate electrification, is in their longer-term economic interests: they intend to inflict all the damage and inconvenience on motorists and bus users rather than their own business customers.

The county council must stand up to this modern-day corporate bully: either a full bailey bridge for the A338 or lower the track. Nothing less will do.

Keith Dancey, School Road, West Hanney