buses

London Road bus lanes – final decision

TonyOX3

On Thursday 12 September the County Council’s cabinet member for the Environment (including Transport), Cllr David Nimmo Smith @DNimmoSmit1, will decide on the final arrangements for the latest London Road bus lane improvements under his delegated powers. The officers’ report summarises the comments and objections received through the public consultation exercise which took place in August.

The report recommends going ahead with the bus lane changes with only slight modifications. However, despite carefully thought-out suggestions from cycling groups (Cyclox, CTC and others), it seems there will be few or no improvements to cycling provision.

Quoting from the report:

16 the principle aim of the London Road Improvement Scheme has been to provide bus priority along this important route into Headington. The proposals as consulted on seek to maintain the current level of cycling provision.

These words are repeated several times in the report and its annexes, each time with the added phrase

without making the situation any worse than it already is.

Continuing,

17 A number of valid suggestions have been made by cycling groups and will be taken into account in any future work to investigate the possible provision of improved west bound cycle facilities on London Road. This investigation work could be incorporated into future project briefs generated by the LSTF currently available to the Council.

In other words, nothing will be done as part of this scheme but the Council will consider doing something if and when any further work is to be carried out.

This is confirmed in the report’s recommendations:

19(c)3 Provision of west bound cycle facilities on London Road be investigated separately to this scheme.
19(d) to instruct that further consideration be given to the concerns raised by Cyclox regarding the merging of cyclists and general traffic on the existing carriageway shared use footway/cycleway.

Taken together I think this must mean that if the report is approved as it stands, the Council will try to incorporate Cyclox’ suggestions for making the point where city-bound cyclists will leave the footpath and join the road safer, but any other work to provide a better cycling route on the south side of the London Road will have to wait.

This seems to be confirmed here:

Annex 1 – objections – Cyclox – 3. In order to give further consideration to the concerns raised by Cyclox in relation to the merging of cyclists on the existing off carriageway shared use footway / cycleway and general traffic, it is recommended that the proposal as consulted on is reviewed during the detailed design stage.
4. Some valid suggestions have been made by Cyclox therefore it is recommended that further investigation work be carried out into the possible provision of improved west bound cycle facilities. This investigation work could be incorporated into future project briefs generated by the LSTF currently available to the Council.

One small improvement is promised:

5. A request was also made by Cyclox to reinstate the faded yellow box marking at the sharp bend on the service road known as The Roundway adjacent to the McDonald’s restaurant to assist cyclists by deterring parking. It is recommended that this is retained but it should be noted that enforcement of this type of restriction would be required to improve its effectiveness and is unlikely to be a high priority for Thames Valley Police.

The response to all other cycling-related comments and objections is to repeat

These comments are noted and should be considered in any future review of cycling cilities on London Road.

Comment

It’s very disappointing that at a time when there’s significant and increasing political support for improving cycling provision, when the government is making money available, when over 100 MPs of all parties attended and supported the Get Britain Cycling Campaign in the House of Commons last Monday, when other cities are demonstrating a willingness to invest in cycling on a scale far greater than Oxford’s uncoordinated bits-and-pieces approach, that Oxfordshire County continues to be indifferent to cycling.

If you want to see the recommendations of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, including one that calls for “A statutory requirement that cyclists’ and pedestrians’ needs are considered at an early stage of all new development schemes, including housing and business developments as well as traffic and transport schemes” here’s the link. Wouldn’t it be good if Cllr Nimmo Smith embraced this initiative and instructed his officers to include more in the scheme than just a dropped kerb or two and a bit of white paint?

Headington Headlines #126

TonyOX3

Here’s my weekly round-up of local news for 19 – 25 August.

The improvements to the Croft Road cycle path in Marston have been delayed because the company supplying two bridges has gone bust, according to a message on the Marston Cycle Path flood information message board.

The official announcement of the new Headington bus routes finally emerged on Monday. The services are being subsidised with £1.2m from the Department for Transport’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF). I assume that’s £0.4m for each of the three years of the initial contracts. Peter Headicar of Oxford Brookes University sent me a considered appraisal.

The people who run Brambles own the business and the premises. They’re selling because they want to retire.

@SunderSandher, who runs the Londis store, has reminded everyone that the shop will soon be open 24hrs a day.

The Wood Farm neighbourhood policing team moved to a new base at the Churchill Hospital on Tuesday.

The planning application to build three houses on the car park next to the Crown & Thistle on Old Road has been approved.

The Prime Minister has a bad back. It is thought he was treated at the Nuffield on Monday.

The campaign by Cllr @laurencepbaxter to persuade Oxfordshire County Council to reinstate the right turn into Risinghurst from the A40 continued. He tells me that if the County Council can’t or won’t fund a crossing with safety improvements – preferably a crossing with lights – it would be difficult to justify re-opening the turn.

Ther are reports that Hill View Farm in Marston may be turned into a conference centre. A twitter account @SaveOxfordFarm has been set up but as yet hasn’t really got going.

My favourite Headington-related tweet of the week:

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

  • Crown and Thistle
  • New Headington Bus Routes
  • Hill View Farm, Marston
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.

Headington Bus Routes – guest post

TonyOX3

Peter Headicar is Reader in Transport Planning in the Dept of Planning, Oxford Brookes University. He emailed me in response to my earlier post about the new bus routes in Headington. Rather than append his analysis as a comment to my earlier article he kindly agreed I could publish it here. He writes:

In principle I would say that the initiative of the County Council and Stagecoach in developing these services is to be welcomed. However the Osler Road issue you raise is just one example of more general difficulties likely to arise with the current back-to-front manner in which ‘improvements’ are being progressed. From a strategic perspective (particularly important if you are seeking innovative approaches) Headington’s problems are tied in with those of the City as a whole (especially the ‘outer city’) which as we know are complex and intractable. Ideally we would be proceeding

Strategy for the City-region → Strategy for the Eastern Arc → Plan for Headington → Individual proposals in Headington (bus services and other).

At the moment things are happening the other way around!

Measures in Headington need to be viewed in the context of planning for the Eastern Arc as a whole. The revised P&R services only cater for car drivers arriving from the East, North and West (via Water Eaton). At some stage the issue of access from the South also needs to be addressed (ie from the Abingdon/Didcot, Wallingford and Watlington corridors). There is also the question of catering for movements within the city between the Marston/Headington and Cowley/Littlemore areas (in both directions – there are major housing and employment concentrations in both). If origin/destination surveys were undertaken of N-S traffic through the eastern half of the city I would expect a significant proportion (including much rat-running) to derive from this combination of movements. (This is clear from the 2001 Travel to Work statistics and I doubt that things have got better since.)

On the details of the P&R services it’s worth pointing out that not all the changes are good news in terms of overall transport strategy. The frequency from Water Eaton is being reduced from 15 minutes to 20 in the morning peak and during the day and from 20 minutes to 25 in the afternoon peak. A contributory factor (but not necessarily the sole one) is the injection of additional running time into the timetable, presumably to combat congestion and improve reliability. Despite the bus priority measures introduced thus far the running times of P&R services generally remain slow – it takes 48 minutes in the pm peak for example to travel from Churchill to Water Eaton. This plus the reduced frequency do not exactly add up to a very appealing package for motorists whose main leg of their journey may only begin when they get to the P&R! The attractiveness/efficiency of the P&R services deserves to be addressed at the city-wide level but also needs to be kept in mind when considering local routeing and traffic management options in Headington.