"The county should buy a unicorn and stable it on the Plain roundabout, where it will magically stop any collisions, alleviate all congestion, and make walking and cycling safe and accessible to all." This would probably make more sense than some of the transport proposals being bandied about, but here I attempt to address some of the less ludicrous suggestions. We need segregated cycle tracks on main roads We do, but in some places (e.g. Iffley Rd) that is impossible, due to spatial constraints, so we have to make do with cycle lanes. In other places (e.g. Woodstock Rd) cycle tracks are only ..read more

The legal changes to Broad St have been made permanent, but the current layout is clearly still temporary, in the sense that many of the features of the area no longer reflect its actual use. Most obviously, most of the existing kerbs are now redundant, or in the wrong place, and serve only as a trip hazard. sitting around A proper plan for Broad St needs to be part of a redesign of the entire area of the city centre north of High St and east of Cornmarket, as envisaged in the Oxford Preservation Trust's proposals twenty years ago, and any such plan will be dependent on funding which is not ..read more

Going through memorabilia, I found some old school reports. So here is a comparison of my "Report of Progress" from Year 5, in 1980 at what was then Lindfield Demonstration School, in Sydney, Australia, and my daughter Helen's "Annual Learning Journey Report" from Year 5, in 2022-2023 at Larkrise Primary School, in Oxford, England. My report consists of four A4 sheets stapled between thin cardboard covers. It was produced on a typewriter and then presumably mimeographed or photocopied, with the teacher writing in it by hand. The last sheet is blank on one side and uses the other for a ..read more

The speed limit on Oxford's ring-road (excepting the A34 outside Botley) should be reduced to 40mph and that should be enforced by average speed cameras. This would help with road danger, congestion, community severance and barriers to walking and cycling, noise pollution, air pollution, and carbon emissions. Enforcement of the existing speed limits would help. Measurements at Barton Park found nearly half of all vehicles on the A40 exceeding the 50mph speed limit (the average speed was 49mph). One interesting comparison: Paris' Boulevarde Peripherique is currently 70km/hr (43mph) and there a ..read more

At the moment, footways in Oxfordshire fall into the cracks between different county teams. Parking, Road Agreements, Transport Development Control, Active Travel, Maintenance, and different Localities teams all implement or oversee schemes that affect footways, but no one has overall responsibility for them. A single county team should be given responsibility for footways, with a watching brief over all schemes that affect them. That could be a beefed up Active Travel team, or a Parking team with an expanded mandate. pole to hold CPZ sign and marked parking Walking is at the top of the ..read more

Guest post by Owen McKnight (Oxford Pedestrians’ Association) There have been dramatic improvements in infrastructure across East Oxford in the last few years. It’s not just about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods! This post is a timeline of specific changes in the OX4 postcode area (which covers East Oxford, Cowley, Rose Hill, Littlemore, and Blackbird Leys). 2019 January: Thames towpath resurfaced November: Raised table installed at junction of Cornwallis Road/Littlehay Road/Rymers Lane 2020 August: Magdalen Bridge cycle lanes widened 2021 January: Yvonne Constance decides to implement the Cow ..read more

No inclusive transport system for Oxford is possible without low traffic neighbourhoods. A genuinely inclusive transport system has to work for everyone. For eight year olds walking or cycling to school by themselves and for four year olds walking or cycling alongside their parents. For eighty year olds who want to be able to walk - or cycle slowly - to their local shops, their GP surgery, or their bus stops, without fear or stress. For wheelchair and mobility scooter users and for the blind and visually impaired. And for everyone else. A white-cane user: I am a totally blind person in my 70s ..read more

What is the road layout on Oxford's Iffley Rd and how is it supposed to work? The key features here are the use of advisory cycle lanes around a narrow central traffic lane with no centre line; between Donnington Bridge Rd and the Plain the cycle lanes are mostly 1.575m wide and the central lane ranges from 4.66m to 5.93m wide. (This was implemented on Iffley Rd as part of the "Quickways" schemes in 2022. A similar scheme was implemented on Magdalen Bridge in 2020; there the cycle lanes are 2.4m wide.) The stretch from Marston Rd to the Plain was already 20mph, but the remainder of Iffley Rd w ..read more

It's great to see Oxford's first cycle hangars appearing in Jericho. Great Clarendon St Nelson St There have been a few complaints that the hangars don't fit in with the streetscape or are inconsistent with heritage values. Unless one is completely blind to cars this seems pretty hard to sustain. The two photos above (taken on my first visit) show one hangar alongside a small car with a much more incongruous colour and the other next to an SUV that is much larger and more intrusive. There were suggestions that there's no demand for these, but the two in Jericho were fully subscri ..read more

Contra-flow cycling should be allowed on all the one-way streets in Oxford. From LTN 1/20: "There should be a general presumption in favour of cycling in both directions in one way streets, unless there are safety, operational or cost reasons why it is not feasible." missing contraflows in Oxford (inside the ring-road), from Cyclestreets The Ranty Highwayman has put together a useful overview of UK advice on contraflow cycling on one-way streets. One key takeaway from that is that no infrastructure (as in a marked contraflow cycle lane) is needed if 85th percentile speeds are less than 25mph ..read more