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

OP, I agree with you.

That’s really hard — £100 a month just to get to work is such a frustrating extra cost, especially when public transport isn’t even an option. It’s so unfair that people who work unsociable hours often end up paying more just to do their jobs. I hope something changes soon to ease that burden — you’re definitely not alone in this.

Too many people here are quite young, privileged, and well-off, so they don’t realize how much difficult and tough it can be—for anyone—to find a well-paying job with good benefits after the age of 50.

I truly hope your husband is able to find a position outside of Oxford that offers both good pay and solid benefits.

I would, because cars ruin neighbourhoods by noise, emissions, congestion and the poor attitude of drivers.

I really don't understand the problem. We regularly cycle 10 miles there and 10 miles back at our age, including all through the winter, as do our friends aged 80 and 77. It's nearly all off road and a lovely ride.

I guess people don't care about the planet and refuse to consider the alternatives.

Excuses so far

• sweaty armpits
• snow
• rain
• it's too far (there are at least 4 park and rides around the outskirts of the city.

Maximum cycle to BMW is probably 20 minutes all off road from Redbridge p & r.

May I be the 94th person to say he's lucky it's not £12.50?

If you bothered to read what the OP said!
They have a commute of an hour.

Yeah ride a bike for work at 5 am or 2 am every day, for several miles, in winter. You must be joking.

I think some people call this progress.

It must be lovely over there in la la land

It’s just not sustainable to just keep loading more cars onto the road. The roads have to constantly upgraded and widened, which then encourages even more car buying and traffic, as people decide to move further out. So it’s a trap.

Much better to move to a mass public transportation model. Has anyone been to Hong Kong? They do it brilliantly given the humongous population. I notice how their elderly people look so much more active and healthy and it’s because it’s a place that’s designed for people to easily walk around.

I have a relative in Oxford who does not own a car and uses a bus to get to where he needs to go in the city. Whenever we visit him, he takes us around on buses. He travels internationally a lot for work, so is not a homebody at all.

Did I say it closed because of the congestion charge?? Er I think not
pointless comment

I agree they need to put more buses and trains on, I have a few friends who are unable to drive and it’s about time they were thought about and how they get to and fro work

Would my knackered knee be a valid excuse?

Even with 2 good knees I wouldn't want to be cycling on my own at 2am 🙄

Hong Kong is an odd comparison?

London, a somewhat more similar place, does have good public transport.

There is a bit of difference between a jolly bike ride when you are 70 or 80 and probably retired to having to cycle home from a night shift at two in the morning

It is mental reading this thread and another in contrast. Oxford has 165,000 people. My town has around 110k. Up 20k in the last 5/10 years. They are building over the next 5 years capacity for another 20,000. Yet we don’t have any of the infrastructure, road capacity, space for such roads. And we are already at standstill in rush hour. It’s a bottle neck right through middle of town and the exiting roads. What usually takes 5/10 minutes takes 45. I do dread this housing expansion. But do hope maybe it will mean we can finally have a hospital.

I admit I haven't read the whole thread and I don't know the details of the proposed scheme in Oxford, but would changing your car make any difference? My little car is exempt of charges in all the Clean Air Zones in the UK as far as I know.

I think you've misunderstood the periods of charge. It's mostly between 7am and 7pm. That covers the vast majority of peoples' commutes.

Planners have turned Oxford into a nightmare city.

Nope, sadly electric cars (or very recently made cars) aren't exempt. It's a bit of a PITA for those of us who DID change our cars to electric/hybrid and live a bit outside Oxford... Each city with a congestion charge/LTN does it a bit differently, I suppose.

I've been dreading this, even though I myself don't drive into Oxford more than a handful of times a year, because there are pretty good park and ride facilities. At the moment. But as soon as this hits, the P&R are going to be overloaded and I bet there's a significant lag in enlarging the car parks for that or laying on more bus services (the last few years have seen a chronic SHORTAGE of bus drivers - it's the usual reason given for late or cancelled buses). See, the congestion charges/Low Traffic Neighbourhoods don't just affect those who need to travel through or past those points - there's a knock-on effect. So the ring road will become even busier as cars all pile on there, aiming at the same point into the city that isn't going to be charged (think it's the Headington one). This will affect things like my son's twice daily journey to his special school which involves going on the ring road. It's all very well for the city council to dream of this utopia where everyone's essential services - healthcare, schools, shops etc - are within 15 mins walk of them, but those of us who have to go further afield to special schools are shafted.

Oxford city centre is just a mess these days. Oddly hybrid-pedestrianised shopping streets which feel very definitely like pedestrianised roads - but buses can go down them and I've seen so many near misses. Cycle lanes across the centre of town take precedence over any local community/commercial events that might happen for a week or so (google Oxford Christmas Market debacle). Virtually all of the decent shops have been sucked out of the major shopping streets in the centre and either vanished or relocated to the Westgate centre, a fairly hideous and bland shopping mall. The main streets in Oxford are now peppered with empty shops (think, HUGE empty shops) and cruddy souvenir/Harry Potter tat/vape/American candy/phone accessory shops (I think most people know these are very often just a front for money laundering). There is very little left of the pleasant buzz you used to get - it's mostly students walking between college and coffee shops, and hordes of tourists. So I don't know why the city council want to suck even more life out of the centre!

but then they couldent afford the areas to begin with if 100 is breaking the bank ?

they manged just fine in the victorian days etc with bikes

I don't have an electric car. My car is 16 years old and has a 1-litre engine. Seems to be exempt from congestion charges.

Good for both of you! You sound enviably fit. I get horrible trapped nerves in my pelvis whenever I get on a bike saddle, and I'm also not a good rider generally. I'm also a shortarse and it's actually quite hard for me to be in stop-start traffic because of my short legs. I can't go into Oxford with my younger son on a bike as he has severe LDs and absolutely no sense of danger. We've reviewed various modes of bike transport for him but he can get out of all of them!

And I don't want to cycle in the heavy rain, or blustery winds, or the dark, or icy cold. And I don't want to cycle on my own as a woman when it's dark. And the bus drivers are a nightmare with cyclists.

So please do take your patronising 'the majority of people can use a bike'. There are so many reasons why a lot of us can't, or feel it would be sensible not to.

What, in Oxford? I mean, I could have this wrong but certainly the original proposition (which is still coming - this congestion charge seems intended to bridge the gap in some way) didn't exempt cars of any size, or electric cars, from the charge. It didn't exempt staff working at the Oxford hospitals, either.

Assuming the pp who said this was bmw is correct they can't spend millions of ££ changing their whole operation because some employees have to spend extra money on a congestion charge

But ulez has been incredible for those of us who live within the zone and need to be able to breathe in order to do so.

If you read my first post, you can see that I said I don't know the details of the Oxford scheme. I also don't live in Oxford. But I know I can drive my car without charge in Bristol, Bath etc city centres, so I wondered if this would be the case in the proposed Oxford scheme, too. In which case the OP's husband might get round the problem by changing their car. But sounds like that's not a possibility then.