Headington Headlines #125

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 12 – 18 August.

The newly-formed Friends of Lye Valley has its own website. Their first meeting took place on Wednesday.

The @HeadingtonPlan Steering Group met on 7 August and the minutes are now online. Mike Ratcliffe @Mike_rat was elected as Chairman.

News broke about two new bus routes connecting Thornhill P&R with the Headington hospitals and Old Road campus. One of them, route 800, is shown as using Osler Road. The current 700 route is being extended out to Kidlington. All services will run Monday to Friday only. Read more on my blog and the e-dem forum.

A con-man who targeted businesses in Headington was found guilty of fraud in Oxford Magistrates’ Court.

Three cameras were stolen in a burglary at a house in Quarry Road a week last Saturday (10 August). On the same day a woman’s handbag was stolen in a snatch robbery as she walked along North Way.

Some properties in Risinghurst had a power cut on Thursday which lasted most of the day.

Work started on sprucing up Headington Quarry Village Hall, which is on the corner of Margaret Road and Quarry Road. The building was given to the local community in the 1930s and is looked after by Trustees.

Brambles, one of Headington’s remaining independent shops, is for sale. Headington.org.uk has the shop’s history.

My favourite Headington-related tweet of the week:

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

  • New Headington bus routes
  • “Open Doors” weekend in September: Headington & Marston
  • School transport in and around Headington
  • Psychology study with people aged 65-75, takes 35 mins, interesting and really worthwhile
  • An additional pedestrian crossing on London Road?
  • Child’s Bike?
I try to 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.

New Bus Routes for Headington

TonyOX3

We’ve known for a while that there were plans for new bus routes in Headington with an announcement expected at the begining of August. Although there’s still not been any official announcement, the eagle-eyed @HeadingtonNews spotted the new timetables on the @Stagecoach_Ox website.

Starting on 23 September the 700 service will be extended to Kidlington, serving Water Eaton P&R and the JR, Nuffield and Churchill Hospitals. New service 800 will run between Thornhill P&R and the JR Hospital every 20 minutes, and new service 900 will link Thornhill, the Nuffield and Churchill at the same frequency. Like the existing 700, both the 800 and 900 services will run Monday to Friday only. See the route maps and timetables here:

These files are all pdfs. You can get to these pages, and to interactive maps of the routes, by entering “Stagecoach Oxfordshire” in the ‘Operator’ box on this page.

These new buses will be welcome in many respects as they offer the possibility of fewer journeys by car to the hospitals. However, whether enough journeys will be avoided to compensate for six more buses an hour in each direction running along the London Road and through Headington shops is bound to be queried. Maybe we’ll learn more of the transport planners’ thinking when the official announcement is made.

The most controversial, indeed unwelcome aspect is that the 800 is routed down Osler Road. I find this astonishing, and it’s bound to provoke antagonism locally. The problems of congestion on Osler Road are well-known, and adding three more buses each way every hour is asking for trouble. Whether this is Stagecoach’s idea or the County transport planners I don’t know, but whoever pushed the idea is out of touch with local conditions and the community’s feelings.

None of these new developments has so far entered the discussions around @OxfordshireCC‘s Headington Transport Strategy about which I wrote last week.

Headington Headlines #124

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 5 – 11 August.

Labour Councillor @Laurencepbaxter (Quarry & Risinghurst) wrote to @DNimmoSmit1 (Con, Henley-on-Thames), County cabinet member for transport, urging the installation of traffic lights and a pedestrian crossing at the Collinwood Road junction on the A40.

As Oxford City consult on air quality, or rather the lack of it, Headington came in for special mention. At the same time Oxfordshire County Council are working on a strategy for accommodating even more traffic.

However, the Headington Transport Strategy has come in for criticism for its lack of community involvement. The full story is on my blog here.

@kalicer reviewed the Royal India, at the Chequers in Headington Quarry.

Morrisons got planning permission for a new shop front on the old Blockbuster store and the shopfitters have already started preparing the shop.

A police traffic enforcement operation in Northway, Marston on Thursday resulted in fines for motorists found shaving while driving, writing notes of a phone conversation, and reading directions from a book on the steering wheel. 14 drivers were fined for using hand-held mobile phones.

A police car responding to an emergency call was involved in a minor collision on the London Road on Friday. Never say my reporting isn’t balanced!

Headington businesses and local community groups have raised £2000 for floral displays.

@Oxford_Brookes is putting on an exhibition of the public art which they are required to provide to enhance their new buildings. It runs until Thursday this week.

Two men were arrested in Headington on Tuesday with ‘a large quantity of drugs’.

Friends of the Earth published a map showing areas of the country ‘being considered’ for the issue of fracking licences. Not just Headington but the whole of Oxford is covered.

In a first for Headington Headlines, at the time I put this report to bed there were no posts on the Headington & Marston e-democracy forum this week.

I try to 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.