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?

Oxford City Council’s complete cluelessness and lack of joined up thinking was evident when it approved the £400 million redevelopment of Westgate shopping centre. Which genius thought it was OK to allow developers to connect a 1,000 space car park directly onto a busy road via a tiny junction with one lane running through it?

And every other day, amidst huge traffic queues in town for the shopping centre, there’s a cry of ‘woe is me, can someone explain WHY people still insist on driving to Westgate instead of using the more expensive and cumbersome Park and Ride?’

@DuncanEnright Thank you for joining the thread, but could you please explain how you think this will be manageable for a woman working in Oxford but living in a village just outside the city where her children go to school? How is she supposed to get to work on time after school drop off and home again for school pick up if she has to rely on infrequent and unreliable bus services or circuitous trips to the park and ride? This describes many employees in the university and elsewhere in the city.

An article from the Oxford Mail with FAQs about the proposed filters.

www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23177152.oxfordshire-oxford-council-abused-traffic-filters/

There's a lot of scaremongering going on IMO.

Another article saying the same thing?

these are the measures that people are objecting to. They are being introduced - it's not scaremongering. It may be labelled a trial but we all have enough experience to know what that means.

I'm sure that it would. Are you going to fix that, or just punish people who can't afford to live next door to work?

No scheme is going to suit everyone, but traffic levels 'punish' others - some people benefit from these schemes

Tbh whenever I go into Oxford I use the park and ride, which is very good.
I do understand where objectors are coming from though, as I live in Bristol where the council are very keen on road closures.

Indeed those that benefit most form these schemes are very often the most vulnerable.

Less likely that the vulnerable will benefit in this case.

The bus gates on St Cross Road and St Clements will mean that all traffic coming into the east of the city will be funnelled down the iffley road which is pretty much residential for its whole length and includes Rose Hill, one of the poorest areas of Oxford.

As that is the only route cars can use, the traffic there is likely to increase, there aren't bus lanes so buses will take longer, and cycling in from there will be more dangerous.

Where would the traffic coming in from the East be trying to go to? Its not as if there is a huge amount of parking for the city centre on that side of town.

One good point about the Iffley Road is that they have widened the cycle paths and taken away the on-street parking as part of the new Quickways scheme. I have been commuting down the Iffley Road daily for many years as a cyclist, and it feels much safer to me now.

Totalitarianism.

Except it's not totalitarianism, because residents like me cast our votes to elect councillors who would take action against climate change.

If residents are unhappy, they can vote them out in future elections.

Do you have examples?

In London, it really feels like elderly, disabled, less-able (I put myself in that category) are being told to get out and stop inconveniencing the fit and healthy.

With much reduced traffic on the roads children would be able to much more safely walk themselves to school or local shops.
Ditto elderly, disabled.

Emma again, vulnerable as in children's lungs benefitting from cleaner air, or easier to get around the roads with less traffic on. Plenty of elderly people don't drive and use buses.

People who need to travel to other side of city aren’t prevented they just need to go a longer way round.
In our city there is no "longer way round" as there is a large body of water on one side and some enormous hills on the other. The longer way round is through people's residential streets.

I'm also not quite sure how couples who have two careers are supposed to do this. It relies on wifey not working or having a little shop job round the corner so hubby can go to (and live near) his office. It is very much rooted in a past that refuses to acknowledge that women have jobs and don't want to spend their days popping to the shops.

This is how the World Economic Forum have decided we peasants will live.

There will be no discussion.

I suppose we all felt safe walking along those roads in the first place, whether we were young or old. Cars are all low emission from 2030 I think?

re elderly on the bus, sure, I know a lot of local elderly who have given up on the bus now as it takes so long due to cycle lanes and LTN, and opt to go out less, and take cabs when they do. Cabs will do well I guess.

Bearing in mind I'm in London, public transport provision is excellent. It sounds like it's not great in Oxford, so why wouldn't they sort that first?

Haven't been to Oxford for about ten years, don't recall traffic issues, I was visiting the Ashmolean. Seems a lovely place to live anyway.

I know. Mum is genuinely baffled by all my new clothes after I spent years being tighter than a gnat's arse...but the price of everything will go up so much.

maybe I should try driving again for the sake of a last hurrah in a car! There's a poem in there somewhere...

Women who worked used to pop to the shops. But I am of an age where Saturday you went to the shops to get larger things like washing powder and in between, you went to the corner shop literally on your street or the next street and the butcher a few streets away. Nearly every street of any size had its own little shop.
It wasn't that they did not work, it was that diets were very limited so a little corner shop, a local butcher and greengrocer stocked all the food you ate. This is only possible with 1970s diets where fruit was oranges, bananas, apples, and then seasonally satsumas, pears, plums and strawberries. There were lots of common fruits these days that I had never tasted as a child.

I'm not quite following the logic here. Literally all the mums I know including myself work. Which is why we support measures that will enable us to get our DC to school quickly and safely, by reducing car traffic on the streets around the schools.

Early in the thread there was a poster complaining that there would be a bus gate between two schools...

@honeymango how do you get your kids to school or the breakfast club, and yourself to work on time? Or do you all work from home?