What's going on in Oxford,why have locals voted for this

[Grumpycat6]

From October,or whenever it starts
My DH is going to have to pay £5 a day ,that's £100 a month
Just to get to work
He can't go by train or bus because he starts and finishes times when they don't run .
Apparently from what I understand this was voted in at the local council elections.or the person who wanted to put this scheme in place was voted in ,.
This is going to effect the price of houses ,it's going to put people off moving to Oxford.
With this in mind I can't understand how this was agreed

I would.

It wouldn't.

Source: Oxford born and bred.

Also, 'bitchy'? So very, very rude.

Where has she said he works at BMW?

Apologies. Maybe "bitchy" is harsh but you aren't exactly being friendly.

Me : not Oxford but Oxfordshire raised and I know loads of people who work in Oxford but don't actually live there.

Awesome.

You'll understand that the city council has nothing to do with the highways then.

@Bunnycute23 also the OPs husband could have been employed at his job for 20 years for all we know - way before the idea of congestion charges was even thought of.

Seriously, it's not helpful to criticise people coming from outside Oxford to work here. The city does depend on them. The cost of living here is so high that many key workers here, such as school teachers, can't afford to live in Oxford; they have to commute. And there is a real dearth of qualified teachers. It's not as though we have a surplus local people queuing up to take all types of jobs.

@Bunnycute23 why do you keep going on about who runs the highways at me?
I've not once said anything about that 😂

Can he not just drive a different way when the filters are operating? Or use one of the many park and rides?

There's always Milton Keynes? Just down the road.

Housing is quite a lot but loads of jobs.

She hasn't! Another example of why some of Bunnycute's posts aren't making a lot of sense.

You need to look on the county council website

Oh give it up.
Seriously.
Wherever the OP lives now it is quite possibly where her job is, where her children go to school, where she has family and roots and so on.
Maybe they already live in MK but the job her husband currently has doesn't exist there so that's why he works in Oxford.
You seem baffled by the concept of people commuting from one town to another for work.
Gazillions of people do it everyday.

The traffic has always been bad, but the badly mismanaged Botley Road closure has made it absolutely dreadful. This will just make it worse for the average commuter. Anyone with any sense knows that the vast majority of the workforce comes in from outside the city. Not everyone can afford to live in Summertown 🤣

Cycling is always touted as the solution, but given the untimely deaths of two cyclist Oxford University staff members in recent years, not to mention a number of others (see the numerous white bikes at crash sites where people have perished) it is not safe. Half the cycle lanes disappear/run out, most are full of potholes and if you dice with death on the Woodstock or Banbury Roads, you’ll have a bus up your backside in no time. Bike thefts are at an all time high too - you can’t even leave your bike safely if you do cycle as it’s bound to get stolen. Oxford is not a cycling city. See Belgium or the Netherlands for examples of proper bike friendly countries!

So it’s about £1,200 a year if he has to pay £5 a day, 5 days a week.

when is his next pay review due? He needs to flag this to HR/his manager in advance. Obviously he won’t be the only one caught by this so they may need to do some sort of travel allowance for staff.

Yep. This or carsharing.

Or the company might adjust the shifts (if at all possible) so people don’t have to drive during those particular time slots…🤷‍♀️🤔

Great.

Thanks.

Well done.

Sarcasm. It's the third most expensive place to live in the UK.

Oxford is tiny. It's the only place in the city with 4.30 am shifts.

Won’t companies just change shifts to avoid ones with only one journey attracting the charge? So for ex 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm and 11pm-7am. Then employees can use public transport 2 times out of three, and can drive when both beginning and end of shift are not attracting a charge.

There’s just one charge a day - £5 - so I don’t think that makes any difference

The counterfactual is the number of deaths that car useage and pollution cause. Hint: it’s not zero.

People bitching and whining about any attempt to do things even slightly differently is the reason we have shit public transport and crappy half arsed solutions. The Dutch and the Danes are not genetically superior to us, yet they manage to have far better active travel and public transport, because they are capable of taking decisions for the greater good, not giving oxygen to able bodied adults who can’t cope with change.

He could be able to drive a slightly different way in, avoid the charging points and not pay. And if in the central purple zone, he could get a free commuter permit. I think the park and ride option is about the cost of the daily permit, so not worth the bother. Plus Pear Tree very late at night feels unsafe, perhaps the others are similar? I have had two unpleasant experiences there, so drive in when I anticipate returning in the dark.

The consultation website FAQ says:-

" I don’t qualify for a permit. Will I still be able to reach all parts of the city by car without paying a charge?
In most cases, yes. The congestion charge would apply only to cars passing through a point on the road. The points would be exactly the same as the planned traffic filter points.
The St Cross Road, St Clement's Street, Hollow Way and Marston Ferry Road charging locations can all be avoided by taking a different route.

This means most of the city would remain accessible for free at all times for cars without a permit, except an area of the city centre known as the “central permit area(External link)” - zoom in to the purple area on the map. This area would only be accessible by passing through a congestion charge location (either Hythe Bridge or Thames Street) due to the continued closure of the Botley Road to motorised traffic. Free permits are being proposed for residents, their visitors and commuters in this area. ‘Commuter’ means people whose workplace parking is located in the “central permit area”. "

That’s what happened with ulez. No support for those that work in the zone, or kids go to school in the zone but live a few miles out. It was those on the outside hardest hit. It did impact shops and businesses to begin with as well.