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?

Many people in the more central zones will be inconvenienced too. Oxford has always had long queues of traffic. In my 60 years of visiting it was ever thus!!

Inconvenienced is not the same as losing one’s job because it’s impossible to be there for the required number of hours because one’s commute has ballooned from 25 minutes each way to 1hr 15, but the kids still need dropping off and picking up at the same time as they always did. Because that’s what some of the mums I know are facing, and what I will struggle with if/when I go back to work in Oxford.

I do understand that. I was responding to people who think the benefits to the city centre outweigh all the other inconvenience. I don’t think they do.

It’s the fact that it’s so draconian and so lacking in any mitigations for many of those adversely affected that makes this such a bad scheme. As lots of people on the thread have said, if this came with real improvements in local public transport, or guarantees that employers would be leant on to provide more home working options, or if it were a congestion charge scheme with lower prices for car sharing or electric vehicles — well, I’d be all for it. I can fully see that there is a pollution problem in Oxford, and it would be great to fix it. Just not like this.

Sounds like a strong argument for doing something radical to change the traffic system then.

Well restricting movement within the city is the councils solution but people still live and work in Oxford. Maybe it should just be declared a museum with entry fees? Book your visit!

@RoseAndGeranium , I couldn’t agree with you more. It would make far more sense if electric cars were permitted to travel into the city centre through the bus gates. As it stands, this plan doesn’t stop petrol/diesel cars entering the city, it simply concentrates them all onto Botley Road. As I’ve tried to explain before, this will make life so much worse for those of us living on that road and we already suffer from the pollution caused by idling engines in the mile-long queue outside our front doors.

This plan neither reduces overall vehicle use nor encourages people to switch to electric cars (which could easily have been done by allowing them through the bus gates). Nobody is going to get on a bus when you have to pay twice (to park and then also to ride) and especially when any buses heading down Botley Road will be even more delayed than they currently are due to the increased number of cars using that route into the city.

I completely sympathise with your concerns regarding the huge increase in your commuting time. I doubt this has been considered at all by the council. They urgently need to review this plan.

To all the people telling me that emissions won’t increase on Botley Road, this can at least be properly evidenced if the scheme is put in place as we already have air quality monitoring (and it already shows illegal levels of NOx).

@TizerorFizz that is exactly what will happen. The shops are already dying in the city centre and this will finish them off. The council are making Oxford impossible to do business in (I’m sure Didcot and Witney will be the beneficiaries).

They are very short-sighted if they can’t see how working people will struggle to reach the city centre. If you’re in a low wage service industry job, why would you put up with an even longer commute at either end of your working day? Especially when there are similar vacancies in much more accessible towns eg Abingdon, Didcot.

If this is truly what the voters of Oxford want, why won’t @DuncanEnright and co publish the results of the consultation? And why did they press ahead with LTNs in East Oxford against the majority’s wishes?

We vote them in. We can boot them out.

I feel for you living on the Botley Road. The traffic there is always horrendous and it stinks of pollution. It is absolute madness to funnel yet more traffic through there. The same is true to a lesser extent for the northerly roads. I can’t imagine the congestion on the Banbury Road is going to be helped. I know someone on here keeps going on about LTNs lowering traffic on neighbouring roads but I’m really sceptical. I thought LTNs were what they’d already put in on the Cowley side streets. This is much more radical, so I’m not sure how studies measuring traffic around LTNs of the Cowley variety would have any relevance to this scheme. And where have these studies taken place? Did those places have realistic alternative transport options (as opposed to dysfunctional park and rides) to offer those who previously drove?

LTNs are entirely irrelevant to the Botley Road because there is only the one road into Oxford from the west.

The bonkers thing about this whole traffic filter idea is that it's supposed to encourage people to take the bus rather than the car. Well the buses on the Botley Road cannot avoid getting snarled up in the appalling traffic as there isn't room for bus lanes, so no one will be able to get a bus into Oxford from anywhere west (the S1 from Witney/Eynsham, S9 from Wantage, S6 from Swindon/Faringdon, as well as the Seacourt Park & Ride). By making it the only approach to the Westgate they're never going to decrease the number of cars going there, so what is the plan for the buses? Answer: there isn't one. Everyone is supposed to just magically not mind that the journeys take hours and they'd be quicker to walk from Botley (which not everyone is able to do).

Less traffic in Oxford would be great but the alternatives have to be there and have to be attractive and work. All this is going to do is ruin lives and journeys and make nothing better for anyone.

I've heard that they've had the same queue on Botley road for the last 60 years.

Another oxon, it's aimply not true to say it won't make things better for anyone, because it will

*simply

@Rummykitten
Theres a big issue with saying there should be special concessions for electric cars. Have you seen the price of them? Will the average office or shop worker or cleaner afford one? Obviously the highly paid university staff will sail on through whilst the cooks and cleaners are stuck with snails pace public transport.

I think Oxford is far quieter than it used to be. There are quite large shopping areas that are dead. The Clarendon centre for one. The old Debenhams store is another. I remember it being Elliston and Cavell. Also my DF got rainwear from Zacs for Macs! Happy days.

@TizerorFizz , good point about the price of electric cars. I keep hoping they’ll come down (especially as we get closer to 2030) but you’re right that they are currently unaffordable for most.

The Clarendon Centre is a shadow of its former self. I walked through it just before Christmas (should have been the busiest time of the year) but most of the units were empty!

Isn’t that partly because of the plans to redevelop the site? Plans I thought were supposed to kick off in 2022. It’s crazy, really. Yes, the more open arrangement proposed looks like it will be more modern and attractive, but aside from the fact that it’s out of fashion there’s nothing wrong with the building. Lots of talk on this thread about reducing car use to combat climate change but what about the carbon disaster of knocking down and rebuilding retail units that are perfectly structurally sound every few decades?
You’re right though that Oxford centre is quiet. I don’t know what the average turnover is in a development like the Westgate but there are several units in there that are already on at least their third tenants, and others that they seem to be struggling to fill at all. And yes, the Debenhams building is empty, lovely old Boswells is now a hotel.

Well, the Boswells building turned out to have walls made of packed straw, so there was no way to make it safe I think without rebuilding.

The other thing is the 25 passes for the rest of Oxfordshire. I live right on the border with Buckinghamshire. It goes through my village yet I am on the wrong side of it. My children go to school in Oxfordshire, we do all our shopping in Oxon, I work in Oxon, I am 15 mins from the ring road yet, I won't even be able to get those. My colleague who lives 5 miles further out but just the other side of the same border will.

@TizerorFizz i read an article yesterday saying that electric car production is being scaled back this year due to the drop in demand and the price of them for the average person 🤷‍♀️

@AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii
I have a hybrid car but even they are frozen out of congestion charging areas in London. They are available secondhand so more affordable. There will be limits regarding who can afford electric cars and it’s a big issue looming up very soon.
I don’t have the answers for Oxford. We parked for a day and it was £20. They don’t want visitors.

@TizerorFizz yes I am considering a hybrid for my next car as it is not as expensive as full electric and wouldn’t need charged as much, I could charge it in car parks etc when needed

@Takeittotheboss It’s an interesting q whether this is democratic, I agree with you that city residents voted this coalition in and these measures may benefit city residents, but where is the representation for people in the villages? It’s not possible to live in an Oxfordshire village and not interact with Oxford eg that’s where the hospital is. And given the housing constraints of Oxford, it’s not possible for Oxford to survive in terms of the workers it needs, trade for shops and restaurants etc, without the village population. So actually I think there’s a democratic deficit here.

Oxford traffic is awful and virtually everyone agrees we all need to be greener. So even though it would be personally inconvenient I would support eg a congestion charge with the money going to improve public transport (like Cambridge) or the current scheme but with exemptions for electric cars and car sharing (yes electric cars are expensive but there are lots of wealthy people in Oxfordshire so let’s encourage them, and car sharing gives a zero cost alternative). But the current scheme just makes basic activities like getting to work close to impossible for lots of people, with no plan now or for the future on how to mitigate this. @DuncanEnright feel fee to respond!

@LauraIAm
Its grossly unfair on poorer people though to say we must have electric cars. Who keeps the hospitals working? Who keeps the colleges running? It’s not just wealthy residents. There are poorer folk in Oxford and the surrounding areas who are then very restricted in what they can do and where they can go. And with your ideas, be taxed even more! It’s a regressive tax to charge for non electric cars. The poorest pay.