Headington Headlines #152

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 24 February – 2 March.

Headington Art Weeks @HARTWeeks joined twitter but without a bio and without tweeting they’re not likely to make a mark.

@LazyGamerUK closed its doors for the last time.

Elizabeth Whitwick of @windmillshop wrote about the Fair Trade concept in the Oxford Mail.

The organisers of the Headington Neighbourhood Plan @HeadingtonPlan want to recruit a part-time Project Manager for a year.

The attempt by Northway residents to block a key access route to @BartonPark_ by having some land on Foxwell Drive declared a Town Green has been referred to a formal inquiry in July by Oxfordshire CC.

Elsewhere, some Barton residents rather belatedly woke up to the fact that the name Barton Park had been foisted on them without any real chance for them to have a say. I hate to say ‘I told you so‘, but … well ..

The Oxford East LibDems have selected @Mark__Mann from Denbighshire as their prospective parliamentary candidate for the next general election.

Mark bolstered his credentials as PPC by turning out for the Walk of Protest organised by local LibDem councillors on Saturday to protest about the state of the London Road and put pressure on the County Council to rebuild it rather than just resurface it when they do the work later this year.

The County Council announced they have found a new operator for the Thornhill/Headington cycle hire scheme. It will be relaunched in April. The new operator is HourBike, who run similar schemes elsewhere. Their twitter account @HourBike is hardly used but they tell me they’ll be setting up a new one for their operation in Oxford.

My favourite Headington-related tweet of the week:

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • Marston number 5 in the country
  • Northway Town Green application and Barton Park
I cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.

Headington Headlines #151

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 17 – 23 February.

The magnolia outside Headington Library was blown down over last weekend (15/16 Feb). Picture c/o @HeadingtonNews.

Headington’s LibDem Councillors delivered flyers announcing a “Walk of Protest” on Saturday 1 March to protest about the poor state of the London Road between Headington roundabout and Bury Knowle Park. Protesters are asked to bring their own placards if possible.

Sainsbury’s opened in Headington shops on Thursday. It’s their 600th Sainsbury’s Local.


Photo: @headingtonnews

Jacobs & Field’s new venture Jacobs Chop House @JacobsChopHouse opened on Friday in what used to be Café Noir on Osler Road.

A man armed with a knife tried to hold up Headington Post Office on Friday, but staff refused to hand over any money and he left empty-handed.

Headington Quarry school marks its 150th anniversary this year! There’s a meeting tomorrow (25 Feb) to start planning the celebrations.

The family who have been managing the Victoria Arms leave today (Monday). They are taking over the Waggon and Horses at Beckhampton, Wilts.

I blogged about the cycleway to be made on the south side of the London Road between Gladstone Road and Wharton Road.

Active topics on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week:

  • Roofer in Headington area
  • Flooded roads in Headington
  • police in Headington post office today
I cover news from the OX3 postcode in Headington and out as far as Barton, Sandhills and Risinghurst (see map). To feed into next week’s summary you can comment on this article, or tweet either with the hashtag #ox3 or @mentioning @TonyOX3.

London Road cycle provision

TonyOX3

Oxfordshire County Council’s proposals for a cycle track on the south (inbound) side of the London Road between Gladstone and Wharton Roads goes to the Cabinet Member for the Environment David Nimmo Smith @DNimmoSmit1 on Thursday 27 February. The officers’ report on the proposals recommends approval.

There has been some consultation on the scheme and local councillors have tried hard to influence the outcome. How successful they have been isn’t clear from the report. If you haven’t been following the story closely the details in the report – especially the impossibly small and undetailed ‘technical drawing’ – are too sketchy for you to really understand the proposals.

Under the scheme there will be a segregated footway/cycleway on the south side of the London Road. Most people prefer this to the shared use solution. However, it won’t be segregated all the way from Gladstone Road to Wharton Road. “Most of the route will be segregated with some small stretches un-segregated due to narrower footway widths” (Annex 2, Officer comments no. 3). The report doesn’t show where the unsegregated sections will be.

Two other points of concern have NOT been addressed. The cycle route crosses Ramsay Road using a “raised junction treatment”. The critical issue here is how the junction will be marked. To allow cyclists as safe and uninterrupted a journey as possible, and recognising they are on a main road crossing a side road, the junction should be marked with Give Way lines and signs on Ramsay Road which give priority to the London Road cyclists. Whether this is intended is not stated: indeed the very last entry in Annex 2 is the only blank box in the ‘Officer comment’ column.

Similarly the treatment of the end of the cycleway at Wharton Road is important. Earlier versions of the scheme had cyclists arriving at Wharton Road with no particular provision for them to join the main road safely. In Annex 2 you will now find “By ending the facility at this junction it gives cyclists the opportunity to re-join the carriageway at a point where there is an advisory cycle lane marking.” How this is achieved will be a critical feature, and it is not too late for the Council to add some protective road markings on the main road.

As for the rest of the report, it’s notable for its sloppiness. The cyclability audit (para. 3) was about Headington roundabout to the NOC, Churchill and Old Road campus. It’s irrelevant to this scheme. The report has discovered a whole new campus too, the ‘Old Headington campus’ (para. 5). It makes a big thing of the success of the OxonBikes scheme – at best a dubious claim given the failure of the company running it, and with no real assurance other than a hope that a successful replacement operator can be found.

It seems likely the scheme will be approved. Let’s hope local residents and Councillors can hold the officers to their promise that “more input will be sought during the detailed design” (para. 15).