Well congratulations and welcome to the Bicester Traffic Action Group column.

Was your journey to get to this page arduous, taxing or unnecessarily circuitous?

I mean because you strove past front-page headlines; heart-warming stories and you have waded through adverts for all sorts.

So we hope that your path to this point was interesting and informative.

Let's hope we don't disappoint.

Where is this going you ask?

We would like to tell you about what today is a simple journey that could very well become a very real arduous, taxing and unnecessarily circuitous route that actually threatens Bicester's economic and social future, but is being effectively ignored by the powers that be.

You may recall our previous article about the East West Rail link that will connect Bicester to Milton Keynes and beyond.

Combined with the new Chiltern Railways Oxford to London Marylebone service, from about 2023 at least eight trains per hour will pass through central Bicester over the London Road level crossing, resulting in it being closed for approximately 45 minutes every hour.

You may already be familiar with the tailbacks that just four trains an hour can cause.

Closing the crossing for three out of every four minutes is going to make the crossing nigh on useless.

Worse still, a frustrated motorist may take their chances and run red lights potentially resulting in a fatality.

So what is the alternative?

Close the crossing and cut off one of the town centre’s three entrances?

What impact would that have on traders? Look how many empty shops already litter Sheep Street.

Yet those ivory tower inhabiting mandarins of Cherwell District Council are planning to expand Bicester by 3,400 homes across Wretchwick Green and Graven Hill.

London Road level crossing would be the key route for all those new residents to access Bicester.

Closing it will turn a journey of less than a mile into a three mile schlep resulting in people switching to their cars.

So much for Eco-Healthy-Garden-Lipservice Bicester!

Ironically, on Graven Hill’s website a story relays a couple’s metaphoric ‘journey’ to their new home.

We only hope that future residents are being informed of the ‘journey’ they face to get into town.

The East West Rail project has been ‘coming down the line’ so to speak for 22 years.

Surely between our county council and district council they could have foreseen this small issue and made provision? No.

Instead Cherwell granted planning permission for retail outlet car parks, business parks and housing on alternative suitable sites.

It is only in the last two years that Oxfordshire County Council and Network Rail have spent time considering a solution to this problem.

Their engineer’s preferred option is a tunnel.

They also considered a bridge but as you can see from our crude mock-up, if a full sized bridge were to be built, it would obliterate homes and businesses as well as cutting off access to the new railway station.

Our Oxfordshire County Councillors claim that their own council is keeping them out of the process.

We recently asked for an update but they have no information to report and have committed to finding out.

Our MP Victoria Prentis, was requested to lobby the Department for Transport for the somewhere between £44m and £65million to fund the proposed solutions as Oxfordshire County Council has no resources.

We are waiting on Mrs Prentis for an update.

You do think however that for people who have been elected to represent the people and businesses of Bicester, they would be slightly more proactive.