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

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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?

Banning log burners would achieve more.

between this and the feminist bull shit I feel like an extra in the Hand maids tale.
Which part of the Handmaids tale is feminist bullshit?

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 don't live in Oxford, but I do live in a 15 minute neighbourhood (although it wasn't engineered so forcefully to be one), and I find it fantastic. I really do think we should encourage their development in as many places as possible. In comparison to the 45-50 minute neighbourhood I lived in before (a bit of a guess) it has incredible benefits.

Gosh this seems like a huge imposition on free movement. Really quite scary! Agree that the driving permits to drive out of your allocated area will probably get reduced to a tiny number of days as time goes on.

This is not democracy or democratic. The people living in these zones are paying the wages of those who are imposing these controls.
And they way to do it - hit peoples bank accounts. They will surely be fined if they go over the number of ‘permitted journeys’

It is an absolutely outrageous proposal which almost all local residents are against. The council do not care and do not listen to the opinions of locals.
For those who are not familiar with the area the council are essentially protecting the most affluent areas of the city who will still be able to drive into town. They are also arbitrarily giving certain areas 100 free passes to drive into town. The area where I live will not get these passes despite the fact that we are closer to town then many other areas. It is going to have a huge impact on us. The bus system is not fit for purpose and very expensive so we are unlikely to go into town very much. We will also not be able to get to our dentist, doctor and the hospital without a very long journey.

Banning log burners would achieve more

Totally agree with this. I cannot believe that they are still legal when we know how polluting they are and how terrible the emissions are for public health.

I live in a very middle class area where they are incredibly popular and in winter I can’t even dry my washing outside unless I want the odour of bonfire on my bedding.

What about disabled people?

Plus what if the local shops are expensive and your budget is Aldi prices? People might be able to manage the odd item, but they're still likely to need to drive to a more affordable shop to do the bulk of their grocery shopping.

This will impact local shops massively and stifle competition. Prices will go up even further

But it will sure benefit huge conglomerates and the likes of Amazon.

What would prevent a ruling that allows only groceries of certain supermarkets or delivery companies to enter your zone. Because they are aligned with 'holy and approved values'. You can see the direction all this can easily go

The only reason they are not banned is that they are popular with well-off people. There is zero reason to have them in towns or cities.

If this happened in my city I would simply drive much farther.

Exactly what @TwiggletLover wrote. It’s discriminatory and a disgrace

Weird, the 15 min neighbourhood thing is an idea in planning, that instead of a doughnut of services in the centre of the city, with a ring of residential housing around it, that neighbourhoods are more mixed and include housing, shops and amenities. I've never seen the concept be used in this way. Cities usually go for a congestion charge around the very central area.

Whilst this may be an extreme or more wide reaching proposal, this is not in any way a new thing in cities is it? Loads of city centres have one way, ring roads and large sections of central pedestrianised zones (with bus and emergency access bollard), and deliveries taking place at non peak times.

There are many cities in the continent where due to historical structures or topography, they have never been particularly accessible by vehicle and as they've grown they've kept the low traffic focus.

Google LTN schemes and loads of places in the UK will pop up. Locally to us a lot of the Victorian back to back streets have had bollards intermittently for decades to prevent rat running etc.

I don't know Oxford at all but I don't think a blanket "this is nuts" fits here when these schemes work well in many places. My massive concern would be what public transport and infrastructure they propose to mitigate this. In Nottingham, when they reinstated the trams, residents got the tram service and safer cycling to make up for losing many cross city traffic routes. Just closing routes and not improving cycling or buses etc is hopeful. You need carrot and stick.

If you have a disabled badge I believe you will be able to drive freely into town.
Also vans and lorries still allowed to drive into town and no exemptions for electric vehicles. It literally makes no sense and will make little impact on the environment. All they are doing is pushing the traffic around to other areas of the city which will become even more congested. But of course all the posh areas where the councillors live will be protected from this maddness

I live in Oxford city. It's all a bloody nightmare. First the LTNs (closing roads off to 'evaporate' the traffic, which is now causing huge congestion on other roads which are residential too), and next the 'bus gates' (those will be a meta carolled not physical barriers).
I emailed my local counsellor and he agreed my current car use is valid/necessary but there's this assumption that lots of people are making unnecessary car journeys which is simply not true.
The majority of counsellors are pushing this yet most of them do not live locally so will not be effected.
The Oxford bus company has just announced cuts to services due to traffic caused by LTNs delaying their buses. This include cutting some routes altogether.
The reason they are bringing in the bus gates is because the LTNs have caused so much traffic and so much delay to buses that they won't get their electric bus grant if they can't improve journey time.
I have responded to all the consultations and it is all ignored, they are hell bent on pushing it forward.
I have been a leftie/greenie all my life but this has pushed me away from voting for those parties locally because they are completely ignoring the actual detrimental impact on pollution but also on people's day to day lives in pursuit of some imagined ideological future.
They are not willing to make the necessary investments in public transport to make this work, and eve if they did there are simply not enough bus drivers at the moment to run existing services so already things aren't running properly and people are left stranded
I could go on!

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I agree with Serene Semolina. Private car use does need to be reduced (especially, yes, SUVs in city centres), but this sounds like a hopeless way to go about it.

Better public transport, better cycling amenities, better provision for disabled people that caters to their needs, more car-sharing ... all this would be so much more helpful than installing yet more bans and permits .

It gets really nasty on the local Nextdoor forum, and there have even been issues with 'volunteers' standing in the roads to block them when someone has destroyed a bollard, and physical altercations between people over it.
It's created a lot of friction in the city and businesses are closing because of it.

Cycling feels more dangerous.

You've not really been banned from going somewhere though - you'll be forced to use the ring road.

Which actually means driving a longer distance, emitting more fumes and having a higher carbon footprint.

I think that all councils should only be allowed to permit new housing developments where there is also going to be sufficient doctors, dentists, schools etc within 15 minutes. But trying to retrospectively impose these things just pisses people off.