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?

It'll be good for teachers to walk 10 miles into work everyday. They can start at 4 in the morning and catch up on marking on the way.

10 miles could be the perfect distance for a bicycle/e-bike.

autastic have you got other work lined up?

this is all so sad.

Ime there are always public transport options if people look into it.

I found that too. Unfortunately, the options were at odds with the hours that my employer required me to be available for work. The earliest I could get to work was 11am and I would need to leave before 3pm in order to get home the same day.

The traffic delays are worse now though already. My daughter gets a multi school coach home. I live in a small town about 12 miles outside Oxford.

It picks up at 6 schools and does a route through the villages.

It's taking a lot longer than it used to already. I just hope any additional measure don't make it worse.

In my view Sundays will be really key in tackling the climate crisis. When I was young, Sundays were spent going to church in the morning and then at home in the afternoon. Nowadays, people are gallivanting around in restaurants, shopping etc on Sundays which can't continue.

This scheme will be a fantastic opportunity for people to re-evaluate their options on a Sunday given that public transport options are less frequent and decide whether a trip is really essential.

10 miles could be the perfect distance for a bicycle/e-bike.

Well it could be. But factor in poor roads, visibility, disability, dropping kids to nursery and school and suddenly it looks a lot less manageable for most.

@Churchillian
Do you live in one of the areas in Oxford which will get 100 free passes to drive into town? Every single person I have spoken to in the local area is against the idea. I would completely disagree with you about the buses being ok. They are truly terrible and very expensive but perhaps this depends on where you live.
The viable alternative is to create a decent and affordable public transport system. It is cheaper for me to park at one of the very expensive car parks in town then get the bus with both my children. At the park and ride you pay to both park and catch the bus.

As with everything else, people are being tested as how much of this authoritarian crap you will put up with. If you’re ok with this, they will go harder. After all millions of idiots were screaming at the government demanding to be locked down.

Plus catching up on marking while cycling is dangerous

I live just outside of the Oxford ring road. From January, the hourly bus service into the centre and the local shopping area/GP (25 minute walk away) is being scrapped due to the delays caused by the LTNs so the only shops available are corner shops which charge a premium. I myself cycle a lot (the cycle lanes are shocking but that's another story) but a lot of people who cannot cycle would now be stranded without access to basic amenities if they didn't use their car.
I understand the need to dissuade people from using cars but the buses are not available as an alternative.
And cycling in the pissing rain adds a whole new level of misery to the whole situation.

I used to live in Oxford - the traffic was awful. They need better public transport and cycling infrastructure. But as a non driver, this plan sounds great!

Yep.

Holis's extreme fondness for the word 'gallivanting' is making me giggle; they've used it at least three times on this thread now. It's filling me with the mad impulse to gallivant.😁I might even do some gadding about as well. Go full-on 19th century, why not?!

Seriously though, I absolutely recognise that not everyone is able to cycle, and I respect that. But some comments on this thread are a bit ignorant about cycling. Yes, cycling in heavy rain is miserable, but it's not THAT bad. You put on waterproofs including rain trousers, and then you peel everything off when you're at your destination, and you're dry underneath and can commence working or gallivanting or whatever. My DC and I did it for all their years of primary school, and now they do it themselves for secondary.

And a poster above, when I said I did the school drop-off by bike and then cycled on to work, said, oh, that means you must have flexible working and shower facilities at your workplace. Those are odd assumptions to make. Doing the school run and work commute by bike doesn't mean one MUST have flexible work, any more than doing them by car. It all depends on distance and timing, which obviously vary depending on people's individual circumstances.

As for the idea that if you cycle to work you need shower facilities: weird. Loads of people I know in Oxford cycle to work, and no one needs a shower upon arrival. It's a cycle ride not a cycle race. (Tell me you don't cycle without telling me you don't cycle...)

It's not just a matter of those who are unable to cycle. I have the ability to cycle but I don't want to. Absolutely hate it.
I have no objection to getting on the bus but not if they are unreliable and expensive. This type of system shouldn't even be considered before significant improvements are made to the public transport system.

That is a problem created by central government that has provided money for LTNs, but has been consistently not providing money for public transport outside of London. Councils have little choice, they either apply for the LTN funding now and get it, or don't and may never get that money.

The sooner the current government leave and are replaced by one that cares more about people than enriching its mates the better.

@jgw1
I'm not sure I follow your logic. Implementing this system is the decision of the local council. They should not even be considering it until we have decent public transport. With out this people's lives are going to be hellish.

The local council can only implement things when the funding is available from central government. At the moment central government is providing funding for LTNs, but not improved public transport.

The cynic in me thinks that central government are doing that, because they know with some people (motorists, more likely to be Tory voters) LTNs will be deeply unpopular and their friends at the Mail can then stir up a hate about local councils, now that the opportunity to have hates against the EU has gone.

And if that journey is too long to walk, not practical to cycle, and there is no public transport?

I don't own a car so I've got no skin in this game, but I can very well see that some people have no choice but to drive.

What would I do? I'd start by improving public transport. Carrot before stick.

Then they should be making the decision not to implement it rather than making people's lives hell and going against what the majority want

The majority of who though?

Is it reasonable if the majority of residents on a particular street want a reduction in the amount of traffic on their road to implement measures that improve the quality of their life even if it inconviences others who live in villages some way away?
Or is it reasonable to subject those who live in city centre residential streets to havecontinued pollution and danger from cars using their street as a short cut from one part of town to another because those motorists must not be inconvienced?

I think it is clear from the comments on the councils social media posts that the majority are against it. It will be interesting to see if they publish the results of the consultation and listen to them in anyway. I suspect not.
Of course it is reasonable for residents to want less traffic on their streets but these proposals will push traffic into other areas i.e anyone who lives along Botley road. Is that fair on those residents?
Or is it fair on the working mother who will now have a daily struggle to get their children to school and make it to work on time? Or the adult children who will struggle to visit their elderly parents?
At the end of the day the residents on the streets who will benefit from reduced traffic will largely have known what the traffic was like when they moved into their property.

I’m amused by the comment about people wanting to live in villages and drive in.

Near me, small towns and villages have been massively expanded to deal with Oxford’s housing crisis. People who work in Oxford and have nowhere to live there. This expansion means our local doctors and schools are struggling. It has been openly admitted that the new houses weren’t actually for local people after all. A large number were for people who work in Oxford and can’t afford it or simply can’t find anything to buy or rent.

Why don’t you build more houses in Oxford itself instead of wringing your hands about your beautiful city not being able to provide more homes, and ease some of the pressure on our formerly beautiful villages and surrounding countryside? A lot of the people in Kingston Pagpuize or Southmoor or Wantage would probably prefer to live in Oxford rather than on the housing estates that are their only affordable option.

I was at university in Oxford and have lived 28 miles away for 27 years. I love the city. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have your precious historic, unspoiled city and expect the surrounding area to act as your dormitory and then penalise the people there for travelling to work in your hospital, schools, shops, businesses.

If people travelling in are a problem, then you have to decide which of your current open spaces you’re going to give over to housing. Otherwise you have to accept that you’ve pushed your housing problem out to other villages and towns and find a solution.

I think it is clear from the comments on the councils social media posts that the majority are against it.

With all due respect, it's not at all clear. I think there are a lot of local residents like myself who don't want to express support for the scheme on social media, simply because the verbal abuse is so bad. 😟

And my main reason for supporting the scheme is not because I want less traffic on my street (though having less traffic on my street is also good for my DC); it's because I'm concerned about climate change.

I'm not sure it will help climate change. People who can't use public transport because it doesn't exist where they live or is unusable, will still travel. All it will do is to move the traffic to the ring road which will be gridlocked and the fumes will be there instead