Oxford 'climate lockdowns' and '15-minute city' - can anyone local explain their views on this?

[unsureatthispoint]

This news has been published in several media outlets and being talked about ATM.

Road blocks stopping most motorists from driving through Oxford city centre will divide the city into six "15 minute" neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.

And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.

Duncan Enright, Oxfordshire County Council's cabinet member for travel and development strategy, explained the authority's traffic filter proposals in an interview in The Sunday Times.

He said the filters would turn Oxford into "a 15-minute city" with local services within a small walking radius.

Mr Enright said: "It is about making sure you have the community centre which has all of those essential needs, the bottle of milk, pharmacy, GP, schools which you need to have a 15-minute neighbourhood."

The aim is to reduce traffic in the city centre and make city living more pleasant, but critics say the plans will negatively affect businesses and the city centre's economy.

Here's the link

www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-filters-will-divide-city-six-15-minute-neighbourhoods-agrees-highways-councillor/

Are local people aware of this and what's their take on it?

You've not really been banned from going somewhere though - you'll be forced to use the ring road. It's not much different from a road layout change.

I think those refering to people being banned from going places are referring to children, the elderly, disabled and so on who live on streets that are so busy with cars that it is currently not safe for them to go to the local shops a short distance away.
If only there was a plan to sort out this terrible state of affairs.

The EU will likely be worse.

@Holis As I have already said when I was young I spent my life on my council estate? Is that really all you want for children? To have as limited experiences in life as I had?

@antelopevalley

Technology means that there are vastly more opportunities now for people to access the outside world without needing to leave home.

Museums, galleries, concerts are all now available virtually.

The other thing I would say is that there will always be exceptions to the above- the occasional visit to a favourite cafe or Aunt Meg who doesn't live in your neighbourhood

Do we get something like a loyalty card that gets stamped at the barrier then checked every time? 'sorry madam, that's five cappucinos this month you've had. You're over your quota for three months. And don't tell me you were visiting Aunty Meg, we've got you on camera at Starbucks.'

Archibald is right on the money. Pollution increases on certain roads. Usually the ones with flats on top of shops etc. none of this is about pollution, just as flying to events about the environment isn't about the envirinment.

Oxford is a joke! The standard trope is to recommend cycling. Most people who work in Oxford can’t afford to live within a decent cycling distance. Plus two university staff members have been killed in the last year whilst commuting…

@Holis Please do not pretend taking kids to a gallery or museum is the same as looking at pictures online.
So you are basically saying poor kids should stay on their council estate and see any of the outside world online.

ALL the swears.

🤣

How depressing. Do you really think that is a good thing? Don't people spend enough time indoors looking at screens as it is!?

I get the sneaking suspicion that @Holis might just be on a wind up.

The thought had occurred to me.

Bloody sad existence and outlook if s/he's being serious, I have to say.

Many people have been warning about this for a few years now. They are always mocked and sneered at as “conspiracy theorists”. I for one am horrified and appalled at how quickly our freedom is being eroded in Britain. Always for the greater good of course.

Sheffield are doing something similar, closing roads to traffic & forcing traffic on to main roads instead of back roads. My mum lives near one of the roads that has been closed & the main road 2 minutes from her house has traffic queues that just don't move, bus timetables have gone out of the window & you can be waiting 10 minutes just to get out from the bottom of my mum's road on to the main road. We lived on the main road years ago & the insides of our windows used to be jet black with dirt from traffic fumes then, I dread to think how bad it must be now, it will take something like an ambulance not being able to get up or down the road & god forbid someone dying or a child getting knocked down for things to change.

Now, that’s just sad!

Very interesting thread!

I live in a village about 5 miles from Oxford. We are fortunate to have a very frequent bus service into Oxford & the market town in the other direction, and good shops l, doctor etc too, so I don't need to use my car much. There is even a bus to the JR hospital (though when I used it it took 90mins to get back, when it's a 15-minute drive (outside rush hours!): not exactly encouraging bus use... service hourly so long wait, it was then late and delayed.).

Being outside the ring road, as I understand it there will be zero permits available for the bus gates. So if something comes up and I actually need to drive around Oxford (eg supporting a friend through a bereavement as happened a few months ago), that will not ever be permitted unless we are willing to spend hours going crazy long routes around the ring road. Which will naturally be even more completely jammed than it is now.

There has been an active campaign to build a cycle route from here into Oxford for 10 years. Still there is no sign of anything actually happening... Another study may be commissioned perhaps by someone eventually but for all the rhetoric about encouraging green transport the councils have no interest in actually making it happen.

The A40 is a notoriously busy road with huge queues in both directions every day. One of the key underlying problems - and this affects the ring road too - is that local traffic and long-distance traffic is all moving on the same direction together. The long-distance people don't want to go to Oxford, they just want to get to the A34 or the M40. Some proper strategic planning on road design is needed, but councillors are far more interested in pet projects they can control.

They are digging up the fields for a new Park & Ride on the A40 - but the dualling through to Oxford which is the substitute for proper strategic thinking has now been binned. So the P&R is going to go ahead even though the buses will be caught in queues and cannot actually reach Oxford any more quickly. Who on earth will use that?!

Oh, and all the towns and villages near Oxford have to take loads of massive new housing developments without any of the infrastructure needed being built (see Wallingford and Wantage for current examples; coming everywhere else soon), to address Oxford's "unmet housing need". Which means there will be many thousands more cars trying to take people to their jobs in Oxford from places that aren't on bus routes to other places that can't be reached by bus, or take about 2 hrs.

Plus any remaining fields north & west of Oxford are about to be covered with Europe's largest solar farm, while the council refuses to let houses have solar panels because they're listed. It's just crazy, lunatic, disjointed thinking everywhere. Such a shame because Oxford is a lovely city and Oxon a beautiful county.

I just can't wait for Botley Road to be shut for 12 months... it's going to be amazing(!). But maybe fewer queues to get to Waitrose.

I live in Oxford and I love the LTNs. They've made it so much safer for my children to cycle to school. These narrow streets were not designed for so many cars. And we have to take drastic measures to stop climate change; otherwise there will be no world left for future generations.

Most of my friends and neighbours also support the LTNs, but like me, stay quiet about it on social media because the LTN opponents are so angry and aggressive. It's a shame that the issue is so divisive. It's worse than Brexit.

I'm not sure about the 15 minute neighbourhood plan to be honest. It seems like it would be very labour-intensive to implement.

Despite my support for the LTNs, however, I think the bus services in Oxford are a disgrace. Services are being cut and prices are being raised. Asking people to use cars less is fair enough, but in that case public transport should be funded as a viable alternative. The problem is that there's no money. The government gave the council a special grant to fund the LTNs, but there's no money for improving public transport. This isn't the council's fault; they literally have no spare funds, and the LTN money was designated from the start for LTNs only.

There are loads of changes that need to be made in the city's infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and make transport more 'green'. The problem is that changing just one bit of the infrastructure on its own doesn't work as well as it should do, and causes a lot of stress.

I think these changes are going in the right direction, but a lot more joined-up thinking needs to be done, starting with better public transport. I've lived in Oxford for about 25 years and the buses have never been as infrequent and as expensive as they are now. Entire routes are being cut. So yes, it's a slap in the face to people who are being told to drive less.

And not every route is safe. I work 5 miles from home and there are 2 ways of getting to the office. One is along the towpath, which is lonely and unlit and the other is along a winding unlit road. I'm not taking a chance on either of them when I can safely use my car

Just to add:
I'd recommend that the Oxford councillors take a trip to Montpellier in the south of France. Fab integrated transport system, with lots of investment & strategic planning, soon to be free to everyone, big underground car parks, pedestrianised centre bigger than the square mile of Central Oxford.

Hopefully they would learn about what could be done and bring back ideas full of hope and promise, not this obsession that making car travel impossible while providing no reasonable alternative.

The theory is everyone will go to work on public transport. Because no one can leave their zone by car, the roads will be less congested and public transport can move quicker and be more efficient.

You will fined by camera if you drove out of your area. It will also keep local business in business and in theory they can have lower prices as the market will be there for them.

I think the theory is being sold along those lines, so everyone knows their neighbour, children at local schools, less road pollution, building communities, supporting businesses etc.

Personally I think it's the next step introducing ID cards and containing people in smaller areas. Fines for leaving your area by car, having to seek permission to leave for holidays and potentially having to pay a penalty to do so. Many people will accept it because they get seduced by the positives.

Think Ely are heading the same way.

If you are worried that LTNs are a way of introducing ID cards then you will be utterly paranoid when you learn that to vote in future you will need specific types of ID.

Of course there will be significant birthdays and things which people will still celebrate in person but the government wants us all at home more from now on, and I can see why with the benefits it has.

As we're not in China the government can want us to stay at home all they like, it doesn't mean we have to!