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?

@drivinghomeforchristmascraic - you're clearly not understanding all of the restrictions Oxford City Council is trying to place on its residents.
It is not 'good on Oxford' for doing this - it is horrifying that they think they can get away with this crap.
Why should residents be told where they can and can't travel? Why should we not being able to visit relatives or go shopping in other areas without the risk of a fine? We don't have the same facilities in one part of Oxford as the next, are you honestly thinking its for the best if some of us shouldn't be allowed to access those?
I'm a non-driver, but I still think it smacks of an authority that has got too much power and doesn't actually give a crap about most of its residents.

I read this last night then you tube threw this at me:
News Australia: Prepare for 'climate lockdowns': Rogue British council wants to strip you of freedoms

Which seemed quite the take on it all.

We don't drive and have lived in several UK cities and towns- and have managed to find neighbourhoods where many things are within walking distance - but never work as well - that been combination of walking, biking for DH I can't and trains and buses.

We've found these because we've needed this so look for this before taking the house - if you've bought a house/rent on assumption you could drive with a reasonable time frame to what you need it's quite the disruption to peoples' lives.

We also depend on deliveries - on-line supermarket shops and amazon deliveries and I can't work out if those are restricted/massively impacted by road closures/restrictions.

As non-drivers we prefer a city center with many shops rather than harder to reach out of town retail parks with poor public transport links. If the city center in Oxford is badly impacted by this scheme it can be very hard to turn that back around.

@Ericaequites I live within 1/4 mile of the county boundary so I won't even get the 25 . The border is very close to Oxford in some places. A colleague who lives 5 miles further out will because of the OX postcode.

just to say it 100th time, non drivers hate it because of the impact on buses.

I actually think London will get rid of buses but no idea what other cities will do.

and why would the well of people who live in Oxford vote for worse air for themselves to keep some commuters happy?

although if it causes the chaos people are saying it will on ring road they might have some regrets if they ever try and leave the city!

What do you think your buses are going to look like if all the drivers do as they are told and get on the bus?

There could be 2/3/4/5x as much demand for the bus.

Are they going to provide that many more buses?

Where are they going to get the drivers from? There is a national shortage of bus drivers because the pay is poor, hours unsocial, especially as many bus drivers have started driving lorries instead, for the higher wages and not having to deal with members of the public who are understandably not always as polite as they should be to them due to the frustration at the terrible service and the knock on effect on their lives

I used to cycle occasionally the 1 mile to DS school. It's along a busy road - that is proposed to still remain open to traffic as part of our potential traffic reduction system. He was 8 or 9 at the time and the road has 3 other schools before you got to his. Every day we got honked at at least once on the single mile. Usually, I'm assuming, by other parents but once by a driving instructor!

I can cycle to work, but DH can't as it's an hour on the train. Other neighbours work 1/2 an hour's drive and public transport would take an extra hour each way. Again, if you don't work close enough, can't cycle, or there isn't public transport - who is going to give up their job? You or DH?

So your employer provides a car park but not secure bike parking. If mine did that I would be asking politely, but firmly that they provided suitable bike parking.

(And yes, as a PP said, if you want all children to go to school within 15 minutes, you need to provide school places for them all in that radius. There will still be children for whom the closest school isn't suitable. More children move school in year than move from primary to secondary, each year, and most of these are for negative reasons including exclusion. My DS is now on his fourth primary school, and two of those moves were to schools too far to walk.

leftfootforward.org/2013/07/the-devastating-impact-of-moving-school-revealed/)

I've been with my employer since 2004. They have some secure bike parking but it isn't enough for everyone that wants to cycle. I assume you think all us cyclists have been sitting on our backsides moaning all that time?

Secure bike parking at work could be quite easy to provide. After all, many workplaces are in fairly secure 'compounds' that are monitored by CCTV and don't generally give free access to members of the public. So your bike will likely be fine.

But what about when you go to the supermarket, cinema etc? If 'cycling as transport' is going to be anywhere near practical, they'd have to provide hundreds of bike lockers at these locations, because otherwise, you're just setting up a Mecca for bike thieves to come and take their pick.

Covid taught as that the vast majority of work, socialising and leisure can take place from home.

@Holis have you any idea just how lonely that was for some of us? You're not seriously recommending it as a lifestyle choice are you?

And I'm an introvert...

What Singlebutmarried · Yesterday 13:37 says is spot on.

It will only really right itself if the usual suspect employers get into the 21st century and offer proper flexible working allowing working from home where possible (or start genuinely acknowledging the transport/traffic unique to Oxford disaster as part of their expectations of their employees).
Cannot see that happening any time soon. Decision makers seem to have some weird idea that people will transport through hell to work in Oxford. Hopefully employees will start to vote with their feet much more.

"@Holis have you any idea just how lonely that was for some of us? You're not seriously recommending it as a lifestyle choice are you?"

It is not employers job to provide social life for employees. And I say that as someone who sees the upside of/quite enjoys working from the office as a flexible hybrid package. But if I had to work full time from home I could do that too.....

Humans are social animals. We're also explorers and adventurers as a species. We learn, develop, innovate and evolve.
It's so wrong to stifle this in us.

No but Holis is saying something else.

i have worked from home for years but lockdown was hell for singles ..
and couples, families...thinking Holis is prob "joking".

Village buses in the areas surrounding Oxford are also shambolic.
I have heard this from multiple people living to the south and the west of Oxford. They are unreliable, an old fleet and sometimes appear unsafe, bus drivers change regularly which suggest to me poor working conditions, and until about 2018/2019 we used to (and I heard others also did) get regular consultations from the council about cutting village buses to more or less nothing as a money saving initiative. The only thing which kept them was the fact that they are also the school run busses in the morning and evening and after that the pandemic (I assume) meant someone decided to keep them.
They are totally out of sync with other types of transport (eg connecting buses and trains) and most of them have nothing at all like accurate GPS trackers or anything like that so it is a lottery whether you will get one and get home.
I have heard this from Witney direction and also Wallingford and loads of people who live in villages around Thame.
No one cares about it though.

@millymog11
Very true. It would be impossible to even get to Oxford via bus. It to mention it would be extortionate.

it stifles drivers.

but allows non drivers, including children, to go explore and to gain independence.

"i have worked from home for years but lockdown was hell for singles ..
and couples, families...thinking Holis is prob "joking"."

I agree that the issues people faced due to lock down were radical and very challenging. But the government should be adopting that proactively (encouraging people to set themselves up to be able to work from home eg insulation /green initiatives as well as giving employees rights to flexible working and making employers deliver that as well as offering employees hot desking etc if they want do utilise that).
If you get your sanity from your colleagues then I genuinely cannot see how that is a responsibility of your employer to safeguard for you.

So that's why the Aylesbury to Oxford bus service has been so messed up recently. I hadn't realised it was HS2 causing them to be late on the way to Oxford.

Has there been any mention about what on other is going to happen for the university students moving in and out of the centre of town each term. It's chaotic enough just having them in the small streets around the colleges without also having restricted routes into the city. I seem to remember that when they were planning to make the town centre electric vehicles only, there wasn't going to be any concession for start/end of term even though it is a fairly defined few weeks a year to work around.

I do have some sympathy with the desire to reduce traffic in the town centre. It is not a street layout designed for cars and even with the high cost of parking it is busy. But this solution does not seem to be it. And the apparent refusal to listen to and adjust in response to local concerns is not doing the council any favours.

Well yes it's extreme and I'd probably be pissed off if I drive but something should have been done years ago and we have sleepwalked into a consumerist, high emissions society where people can do what they want with no thought for others.
I have two choices to walk to school, 30 mins or 10 mins. The 10 min choice is the road way with hundreds of cars spewing out pollution that will harm my children, arseholes who don't give a crap about my kids who don't stop for the lights or zebra crossing, so I go round the back of the park to cut that out. I could walk the 10 minute route if there were no cars. I would love it. y kids could play out.
There are at least 10 instances of child deaths in my small area from cars.

I can't even ride my bike on the road without getting shouted at or drove too close to.

I hope my city does it.

if they have a good bus service or will improve the existing one for this then I don't see a problem except for disabled badge holders which I assume will be able to drive through anyway.

This is a letter from residents of one particularly badly affected city centre area about the real effects this plan will have on them. www.oxfordwaterside.co.uk/bus-gates-and-ltns

But the government should be adopting that proactively (encouraging people to set themselves up to be able to work from home eg insulation /green initiatives as well as giving employees rights to flexible working and making employers deliver that as well as offering employees hot desking etc if they want do utilise that).

Stop building poky little 'micro flats' then and build homes with enough space for an office

I live outside of Oxford in a village with no public transport. My nearest bus service is 4 miles away and then it is a 50 minute bus ride (operating three times a day Mon-Sat down from five times daily) around the villages to get to central Oxford. There was a bus travelling via this village to the JR at approximately the same time, but recently this has been cut. So now this bus is twice as full, and elderly/worried out-patients/visitors have a much longer more expensive complicated journey.
None of that is under the control of Oxford city council, but was a decision by the private bus company. And that likely was prompted by a drop in subsidy from Oxfordshire county council.

I think it is commendable that the city council are trying to improve matters within the city for their residents and tourists, but without joined up thinking, input and investment by external parties nothing will improve for those travelling in to the city for work/daily needs.

Central government needs to prioritise public transport of all kinds in low key ways like local/rural bus and train services, along with safe cycle routes. Rather than throwing monies at HS2, new roads and flash motorways.