Your report (Bus services in England face axe as end to emergency Covid funding looms, 11 January) doesn’t mention the most economic solution to connect communities to town centres – the minibus.

I am an honorary director of West Oxfordshire Community Transport(WOCT), which runs five minibus services linking estates and villages to the centres of Witney and Carterton. Some of these places used to have bus services, but the routes were hugely subsidised as there were only small numbers of passengers rattling around in expensive doubledeckers. Although overall demand was low, there was a demand for the service from people who had no access to a car – usually people on low incomes or people who are unable to drive.

A minibus of up to 16 seats is much cheaper to operate – the driver doesn’t have to have a public service vehicle licence, and the capital cost is much lower. However, all passenger minibuses in the UK are converted vans and, while the few companies that do these conversions do them reasonably well, structurally they are not really up to taking the weight of 16 passengers and a driver over a prolonged period of time.

Our services are subsidised, as most such services meeting a social need will be, by the local authorities. There is a huge opportunity for a company to be established in the UK to produce right-hand-drive minibuses for passenger use.

If it is accepted that the cost-effective solution to providing links from communities to town centres, or frequent public transport services, is the minibus then the government should seriously consider establishing a minibus production company in this country.

Mike Parker

Director, WOCT; former director general, Nexus (the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive)

Residents in a North Lincolnshire village have been left feeling a little disorientated after a road sign was erected welcoming people to Yorkshire.

The mysterious sign, which can be seen by motorists entering Sandtoft, appeared earlier this week.

One resident said it was about 150m (492ft) from the original Welcome to North Lincolnshire sign – on the same side of the road.

Some have suggested it is the work of contractors unfamiliar with the area.

The local authority, North Lincolnshire Council, said it was unaware of the sign, while the neighbouring authority, Doncaster Council, has yet to respond to a request for comment.

Posting in a local Facebook group, one resident said it appeared the sign had been put up on the wrong side of the road and facing the wrong way.

The figure represents a three-fold mortality rate on 2016 data, described as “alarming” by a team at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) researchers.

A study in 2016 put the UK road death figure at 100,000 but experts suggested that was a “mid-line estimate”.

Researchers said measures such as tunnels and speed bumps “could” protect the animals but ultimately relied on drivers’ behaviour to change.

PhD student Lauren Moore led the review, which has been jointly funded by wildlife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and NTU.

Recent estimates put the hedgehog population in England, Wales and Scotland at about one million, compared with 30 million in the 1950s.

“Hedgehog roadkill is sadly a very familiar sight both in the UK and in Europe,” Ms Moore said.

The research considered a number of measures to protect the creatures, including speed bumps, road signs and tunnels, but concluded none would be effective without help from drivers.

“Although we know some hedgehogs use road-crossing structures, we don’t yet know how effective these solutions are,” Ms Moore continued.

“Changing drivers’ behaviour has been shown to be difficult to achieve and sustain, reducing the potential for meaningful reductions in roadkill.”

Some 18 million cars will be on the road over the Easter weekend, of which 10 million will be motorists going on a break.

I remember laughing at my first visit of the decade to St Ives at the Park and Ride – I soon learnt the error of my ways.

I thought the price of parking was steep at the Dales Countryside Museum until I thought of the number of cars likely to be there over Easter.

I remember tensions between a coastal authority I worked with and a sea side town council over who should run the car parks.

It seems to me that there are real opportunities to think more creatively about how to manage bank holiday traffic in key rural locations where maximising visitor opportunities is crucial to the making the seasonal nature of tourism businesses work.

It also seems to me that apart from in a very few places local authorities don’t take thinking these issues through seriously enough. You will no doubt tell me if I am wrong….