Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet approves the Central Oxfordshire Travel Plan and Traffic Filter scheme
Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Cabinet approved the Central Oxfordshire Travel Plan (COTP) and the Traffic Filter scheme at a Cabinet meeting on 29 November 2022. See Agenda item - Central Oxfordshire Travel Plan | Oxfordshire County Council. and Agenda item - Core Schemes - Traffic Filters ETRO Approach | Oxfordshire County Council for details of each. There were many speakers at the meeting, including representatives of liveable streets and active travel campaign groups and residents’ and traders’ associations, members of the public and councillors. The list of speakers and links to their speeches can be found here, This is the first Council meeting that HLS spoke at – see here for a copy of HLS’ speech.
It was a very long meeting, which turned out to be perhaps the most eventful and unusual Council meeting to date: repeated heckling from the gallery, a temporary postponement of the meeting to deal with the heckling and a disruptive speaker and Piers Corbyn making an unexpected in-person appearance. The recording of the meeting can be viewed here. Of the Headington-area Councillors who were part of the Cabinet, Liz Brighouse and Glynis Phillips voted in favour of both schemes. Mark Lygo voted in favour of the COTP but was the only Cabinet member to vote against the Traffic Filter scheme. We are pleased that this decision means the Traffic Filters scheme will go ahead (on a trial basis), but, like many groups campaigning for safe and liveable streets, we are disappointed that: The HGV exemption in particular seems irrational in light of the Council’s Vision Zero commitment following the recent deaths of four people cycling in Oxford which were all caused by HGVs. However, only lived experience of the scheme will show whether the limited restrictions and operating hours are sufficient, and the use of an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order to implement the scheme will allow for adjustments to be made during the trial if necessary.
The scheme has been delayed until 2024 – it was originally timetabled for summer 2023, and given the dire state of congestion, pollution and failing bus services in Oxford, if anything there is a need to bring this scheme forward (bearing in mind that this scheme has been part of the Council’s publicised plans for traffic regulation since 2015) - see timeline below:
The other core schemes of the COTP – the Workplace Parking Levy and Zero Emission Zone – are still to be implemented and consulted on (see the Council’s COTP brochure
Councillor Tim Bearder expressed some frustration in the meeting about the lack of an implementation programme for these other COTP schemes, and it was agreed that the Corporate Director for Environment and Place must produce a report on this for the January 2023 Cabinet Meeting. We can hopefully therefore expect to see a timetable for implementation soon.
As mentioned in our previous article about how the traffic filters will affect Headington the Workplace Parking Levy scheme is likely to be more effective and beneficial for Headington in reducing its destination traffic, so we will do what we can to support this, in the knowledge that the big employer institutions in Headington – OUH NHS Trust, Brookes University and Oxford University – also support this scheme.
We will also continue to try to get low traffic neighbourhoods implemented in Headington, particularly as the traffic filters may have the effect of increasing rat-running through the Headington roads and neighbourhoods that were due to be trialled as low traffic neighbourhoods in Spring 2022.
See our previous related articles for background:
(And, going way back…)