Agenda item

Forward Plan Ref: 2019/185

Contact: Hugh Potter, Group Manager – Area Operations Hub Tel: 07766 998704

 

Report by Director for Community Operations (Interim) (CMDE4).

 

The report presents an ‘overview’ of responses received in the course of the statutory consultation following the implementation in November 2019 of an experimental Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) prohibiting access by motor vehicles to and from Walton Street at its junction with Beaumont Street and Worcester Street in Oxford.  A determination on whether to make the experimental order permanent would typically follow promptly following the end of the formal consultation phase. However, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation and following a significant number of responses received during the formal consultation period, county council officers are recommending deferral of a decision on Walton Street until a later date recognising that a final decision on whether to make the trial closure permanent is still required before May 2021. 

 

The Cabinet Member for the Environment is RECOMMENDED to defer a decision on the continuation of the above experimental order pending further analysis and assessment of its impact.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cabinet Member for Environment considered a report (CMDE4) presenting an ‘overview’ of responses received in the course of a statutory consultation following implementation in November 2019 of an experimental Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) prohibiting access by motor vehicles to and from Walton Street at its junction with Beaumont Street and Worcester Street in Oxford.  A determination on whether to make the experimental order permanent would normally follow promptly following the end of formal consultation but in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation and following a significant number of responses received during formal consultation the Cabinet Member was being recommended to defer a decision on Walton Street until a later date while recognising that a final decision on whether to make the trial closure permanent would still be required before May 2021. 

 

Patrick Davey (St Bernards Road Residents) advised that the Walton Street closure had led to an extra 500-750k cars per year being ‘rat runned’ into our side-street of St Bernards Rd. Additional cars, which bumper to bumper would stretch 4-5000 miles. That is on top of what we already had, on top of what was already our fair share and taking Walton Streets fair share. Unfair indeed while at the same time traffic now using south Walton Street was zero which was quite unfair and Walton Street, the major arterial highway for entering and leaving Jericho was now a sea of unimaginable tranquillity at the expense of devastation in St Bernards Road.

 

You are well aware of these issues and the problems and we have appreciated your expressed sympathy and promises of mitigation. However, no mitigation has occurred. 

 

In light of this, I could have shouted for identical treatment as Walton Street - total closure right now for St Bernards Road. However, I have sought to have principles for traffic flow: 

 

1) equity with each area to take their fair share of traffic 

2) traffic to exit by the shortest route to the major roads around Jericho/Walton Manor (Beaumont St, St Giles, Woodstock Rd) 

3) no internal rat running between different areas. 

4) reduced overall traffic.

5) enhanced environment

 

I have met with many others throughout Walton Manor and Jericho to create plans that had community wide support and were just, equitable and sought to enhance our environment. With compromise between different streets and groups we believe a solution will be found, a just one. 

 

However, in the interim, we request mitigation for St Bernards Road and I am urging you today:

1.   To re-open Walton St, given the imminent bus gate.

2.   To commit the county council to implementing our mitigation in St Bernards Road within 4 or 5 weeks. 

3.   To further develop and implement the Jericho Low Traffic Neighbourhood Plans. 

I urge you to do what is right and fair and very much hope that you will be able to help us all create a wonderful environment for the future in which we all wish to live and of which we are all proud.

 

Tim Morris a resident in Observatory Street while not representing the collective views of Observatory Street residents advised that having discussed the closure with neighbours he felt able to broadly express a collective view and concerns. In general, he was reassured that the Council was taking seriously the concerns expressed by many residents and businesses in Jericho and Walton Manor and given the proposal to postpone a final decision on closure for the time being he asked for the following three points to be taken into account:

1.     Low Traffic Neighbourhood: he endorsed the need for - and benefit of - maximum consultation with local residents on achieving a low traffic neighbourhood

2.     Observatory Street: was a very narrow, residential road, with a speed limit of 20mph inadequately enforced by the existing road-traffic humps, suffering from rat-running before the closure of Walton Street but as a result of the closure, traffic volumes prior to lockdown had increased. There was now more rat-running by traffic seeking access to Walton Street and Jericho that would previously have entered at the south end of Walton Street. Hence, the effect of the closure was inequitable with the south end of Walton Street disproportionately enjoying the benefits of reduced traffic, while streets that run east-west such as Observatory Street had suffered. We assume that this had not been the intention of the Council when it instituted the closure so, therefore, we seek a more equitable traffic solution in the context of the overall goal to reduce traffic volumes in the centre of Oxford. Our solution would be to close Observatory Street to all traffic except residents and introduce a two-way flow for them. That would stop the constant flow of through-traffic such as vans, trucks, taxis and delivery vehicles for takeaways (now much increased by restaurant closures etc) and also facilitate and enhance the proposed pedestrianised area on Walton Street as well as having important environmental benefits.

3.     Walton Street Closure: He supported and reinforced the vital importance of continued closure of Walton Street in conjunction with the proposed Worcester Street bus gate and a parking levy on visitors as incentives to limit traffic flowing into Jericho and Walton Street from outside the area, as consistent with the local traffic policy goals.

 

Jamie Hartzell spoke on behalf of Don’t Choke Jericho, a group of local residents calling for a low traffic neighbourhood for the whole of Jericho and Walton Manor.  They hoped for a fresh perspective to the debate and to work with the County Council to develop solutions that the whole community could support as ultimately we would all need to compromise if we were to reach a solution as a community and decide the way forward.

 

For the last few months, we have been encouraging residents to rise above the ‘No more traffic in my street’ approach and consider the neighbourhood as a whole. Every individual street was important but we need an integrated, well-designed and fully consulted low traffic neighbourhood for the whole of Jericho and Walton Manor based on clearly articulated principles. Firstly we should aim to reduce traffic, distribute it equitably between the remaining streets and support initiatives to reduce traffic volumes.

 

We see six things that unite the whole community:

 

·           A thriving community and street life

·           Buoyant cafes, restaurants, cinema and shops

·           Clean air

·           Access to, and for, essential services

·           Safer and quieter streets

·           And clear steps to address climate change.

 

Our consultation work to date has brought us to a compromise solution that delivers on all of these. Move the barrier further north and replace it with four traffic filters preventing all through traffic but leading to a fairer distribution of local vehicles between north and south thus ending the plight of residents in St Bernard’s and Leckford Roads to the North. In the south, the elderly and disabled would again have access to essential services and with reduced congestion it might even be possible to bring the bus back. Southern Jericho would again have some local traffic but nothing like before.

 

The most exciting of the four filters would be in Walton Street itself, where pedestrianisation of the middle part of the street is proposed and with sufficient investment and good design could make Walton street a come-to destination, giving traders a much needed boost in these difficult times.

 

Having spoken with Walton Street outlets we have found a much more nuanced picture and although some were fearful of change and there were complex challenges in how to manage deliveries others had welcomed the chance to spill out into the streets and create an environment where customers were more willing to linger and browse.

 

Don’t Choke Jericho would welcome a decision to defer with further consultation but not if that results in inaction. Designing and fully consulting on a low traffic neighbourhood is a lengthy business, and we need to start now. We stand ready to help. Finally, you might think from the published papers that the numbers in favour of closure are similar to those against but the two Jericho Connections petitions are duplicates of each other with the same signatories with 30% of them from outside of Oxfordshire and their signatures took 7 months to gather, whereas ours took just 3 weeks.

 

David Hearn considered that closure of the Walton Street artery had been a disaster well before the Covid lockdown with research by shopkeepers and local businesses as well as protests in the local press showing that to be the case.  There had been a lot of propaganda and misinformation put about which was both false and inaccurate.  He along with many others wanted Walton Street to remain open and were frustrated that it remained closed and neither did he want bus gates provided.

 

Bernadette Evans (Jericho Traders Association) advised that Walton Street had been a retail destination since 1825. Having survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 it now faced the threat of COVID but, before this, our businesses were facing another significant threat – the continued closure of Walton Street.  She was speaking on behalf of the JTA which represented the 44 businesses in the neighbourhood. Our request was simple, please help us survive the COVID threat but also the much longer-term threat that closing our street posed. The current situation was double blow and for some of our traders would be a fatal one.

In most of our forty plus shops you will see a Save Jericho window sticker. A business impact survey conducted in January and February this year and well before COVID suggested 82% of Jericho businesses had reported a loss of customers and revenue, which had been caused by the road closure. We had yet to receive a response to that survey from the Council and would like to know whether it had accepted its findings.

When the decision was made to bring in the ETRO we were uncertain if thought had been given to whether businesses would be affected by closing the road or even if the Council realised how many of us there were in Jericho, how much wealth we generated, how many jobs we had created and our contribution to making Jericho the special neighbourhood it is. We feel our businesses have been overlooked or worse still - simply considered inconsequential.

 

Jericho was and is a destination shopping area – not just used by locals but customers from outside Oxford who needed access by car. It’s unlikely that people if they’re busy will just ‘pop’ to Jericho for a quick lunch in a cafe if they had to use park and ride or public transport. Customers just wouldn’t accept the inconvenience and would go elsewhere where they could park. We don’t want rat runners in our neighbourhood but our definition of rat runners would be drivers who use Walton Street and whose destination is somewhere other than Jericho.

 

Pretty much all Jericho shops were doing well before the road was closed and we simply to do not understand why the Council has put us in this position.  We have been grateful for the support shown such as the new signs on the approaches from Woodstock Road but sadly it only helps slightly and can only be a sticking plaster. In the wake of COVID we welcomed both the Council’s and central government desire to help the retail and hospitality trade in these difficult times and right now, you have the power to help us. Please reopen Walton Street while you undertake the new extended consultation period and don’t allow your decision to be a factor that means trade on Walton Street does not survive.

 

Pip McCallister for Jericho Connections believed that Jericho should be accessible to all residents, workers, shoppers and visitors whether they arrived on foot, public transport, bike, car and even boat. We value our community, businesses and our environment as well as our historic connections to the rest of Oxford and it’s essential that Jericho continued to be a vibrant place to both live and visit and so we will continue to campaign to reduce the impact that non-essential traffic and pollution has on our neighbourhood.

 

Jericho Connections submitted its petition on 26th May requesting that OCC reopen the road for six months in order to collect baseline data which would allow them to scientifically assess how successful the ETRO had been in meeting its aims. Without that essential data we argued that it would be impossible to evaluate the outcomes. Since then, the petition has continued to grow and had now reached almost 1,000 signatories although we notice that in the officer report the 252 paper petition numbers had not been included.

 

Jericho Connections submitted its formal objection to the ETRO on 29th May 2020 setting out the following key issues:

 

Increased isolation for our most vulnerable residents. We feel that the closure breaches (amongst others) the Equality Act and the Public Sector Equality Duty Act 2011.

 

Displaced traffic and increased journey times had resulted in additional congestion and reduced air quality in other parts of the neighbourhood with carbon emissions generated in these longer journeys more than negating any reduction of emissions within Jericho itself. Data subsequently released suggests that air quality within Jericho had never actually exceeded recommended levels and it was also worth noting that the Walton Street pollution data showed no significant drop during 2019 demonstrating that traffic flow (pre Covid) was not as reduced as supporters had claimed but was effectively static. The closure of the south end of Walton Street had only cleared traffic from one-fifth of the entire length of Walton Street but left the remaining majority (four-fifths) of Walton Street under increased pressure from existing and intensified chaotic traffic. In addition, for those reliant on cars or taxis (to access work or medical treatment for example), the additional mileage came with an increased personal cost whilst local businesses who made deliveries were experiencing increased operational expense.

 

Impact on local businesses.  Walton Street could be described as the lifeblood of Jericho and the closure of Walton Street to through traffic has had a huge, negative impact on local businesses with 84% emphatically opposed to the closure and 82% reporting a downturn in trade prior to the Covid lockdown. At a time when businesses were struggling to survive the impact of the pandemic, these (mainly independent) businesses need local government support rather than further obstacles to recovery.

 

Jericho was unique. With three hard boundaries (Worcester College, the Lucy’s Development and the Oxford Canal) Walton Street was the only way in and out of this special enclave. Comparing Jericho to Waltham Forest and forcing an inappropriate model on a completely different type of geographical area was simply ludicrous. Jericho had no public transport links whatsoever, whereas the residents and businesses of Waltham Forest had easy access to multiple forms of public transport 24/7.

 

 

It was a misconception that Jericho was an affluent area and while a considerable level of gentrification had occurred since the area was saved from demolition in the 1960s in reality social housing and private rentals made up the majority of properties within Jericho. Jericho had almost 15% pensioner households and 38% ‘lone parent families’ with dependent children, whilst the poverty rate amongst children and older people was higher than the city average with 51% of all children & 65+ living below the poverty line.

 

The pro-closure lobby are quoted as wanting to “return Walton Street to a quiet residential street” … Walton Street had never been a quiet residential street and it’s very existence stemmed from the need to serve the growing manufacturing, academic and boating communities within Jericho and Walton Street had been a commercial street since the area was developed almost 200 years ago.

 

Jericho Connections welcomed the announcement that future consultation with all stakeholders was planned and were keen to develop an alternative Liveable Streets proposal that secured viable connections to the rest of Oxford; encouraged an equitable distribution of traffic throughout Jericho & Walton Manor; promoted roads that were as congestion-free as possible and supported a vibrant independent retail and food offering.

 

John Mair a retired citizen of Jericho with an active interest in the future of this area advised that since the closure of Walton Street through force majeure and brave leadership, living in Jericho had been a joy. Few cars, better air, much safer for pedestrians (especially children), cyclists and motorists. It is a portent and a pilot for the future of us all. .Local shopping had been much easier  especially in lockdown. Parking was easier and I can see no rational reason to have a full opening up of the street. The campaign based on that is simply based on a false premise.  There are alternatives:

·      a bus gate at Worcester street instead of the current ugly plastic barrier allowing allowing through emergency vehicles, taxis, delivery lorries (at certain times), mobility vehicles and using ANPR, cars with Jericho/Walton Manor parking permits.

·      the bus gate in Hythe Bridge Road was a non-starter. An un-necessary impediment to the flow of traffic from the north to the west of the city recreating rat runs in Jericho that had been driven out.

·      The idea of imposing a Mini Holland in part of Walton Street was not a good idea as it would replace one rat run with three new ones including one past a primary school and the proposal was fatally flawed.

 

The best solution, in his opinion, was the Walton Street bus gate plus severe traffic calming on Walton Street-speed limits/bumps and much widened pavements from Gt Clarendon to Cranham Street to provide a Jericho pavement culture. Those who trade and adapt to this new reality would benefit. Those who do not would lose.

 

The Cabinet Member advised that there would be a separate consultation on the bus gate proposals and that that was not part of the decision process today.

 

County Councillor John Howson. When I addressed the Cabinet about the last iteration of Local Transport Plan 4, I started with the following quote paraphrased from Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia:

“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.”

The Cabinet Member I’m sure recognises the importance of this quote, but not in North Oxford. There is no mention of bus services in the officer’s report, save under the comments from Bus Users Oxford – Restore some through services to Walton Street.

This lack of interest in the consequences typified the whole approach to this scheme and unlike the recently announced Low Traffic Neighbourhood in East Oxford, where the scheme had been fully researched in advance and those living locally consulted, the Walton Street Barrier ETO extended an existing temporary closure and was introduced with no prior consultation.

That partly might be my fault and if so I apologise. The residents of Kingston Road had been complaining about traffic using their road as a rat-run despite, speed humps and two VAS signs and I came to the September delegated decisions meeting to remind the Cabinet Member of their concerns.

However, taking action without consultation, has brought us to where we are today. A request from officers to defer because of the need for more time to analyse the results of the post-hoc consultation.

There had been significant unintended consequences in my division from the closure and others may talk of those elsewhere, but in my Division St Bernard’s Road and Leckford Road have become the first and second routes out of the area from a much wider area than before the barrier was put in place. The temporary measures put in place are unsightly and, unless the latest traffic data shows otherwise, had largely failed to achieve their objective of deterring drivers. Others might wish to comment upon the signage.

The fact that more than 600 comments and 5 petitions had been received is a testimony to the concerns of residents across the affected area. The first petition was presented to Cabinet more than six months ago and it will now be 18 months before the outcome is finally decided.

In the meantime, events had overtaken us. On the day this decision to defer was announced, at 10am, a further announcement at 2pm introduced a ‘temporary’ bus gate in Worcester Street. That would be a bus gate with no buses, but with plenty of tourist coaches making use of their right to enter St Giles from that direction.

Can I ask the Cabinet Member to help my residents understand the position of the Walton Street barrier in this wider scheme of traffic management by answering the following three questions?

What is meant by ‘temporary’ – is it the same length of time as the Walton Street ETO?

What hours would the bus gate be in operation?

What permitted use by residents would be allowed and would it be from the date the bus gate came into operation; since virtually the whole of central and north Oxford is controlled by CPZs, residents of which CPZs will be allowed any priorities in relation to the bus gate?

Let me end where I began, with buses.  The county has agreed the following improvement to services within Oxford from September 2020:

• New service 20, three journeys per day on weekdays, between Rose Hill and Cowley;

Sadly, there’s still no money for buses to return to Walton Street and Kingston Road despite the restrictions on car use imposed upon local residents by the two closures. 

Responding to Councillor Howson the Cabinet Member advised that these issues were still being decided.  The consultation period would be the same as for the experimental temporary closure but it was hoped that it would not take that long.  The bus gate proposals had been introduced at short notice to take account of exceptional circumstances.

County Councillor Emma Turnbull advised that it was clear from the presentations from residents and traders that there was a lot of frustration and concern felt by local people that decisions which affected their lives were being taken out of their hands or imposed without adequate input or consultation.  She didn’t doubt the experimental TRO had been imposed with the best of intentions namely to reduce traffic levels and pollution but she hoped lessons could be learnt about the importance of community engagement and the drawbacks of relying on temporary powers.  She was pleased that the recommendation was to postpone a final decision as more work clearly needed to be done to engage locally and come up with proposals that reflected this vibrant area.  Residents and traders clearly had many ideas and she had had conversations about ways that Walton Street and neighbouring streets could be boosted by removing awkwardly placed parking and bike racks and opening up the area for tables and chairs at permitted times while retaining space for public transport and cycling. The area had the potential to be a thriving low transport neighbourhood but it was important to spend the next few months getting things right with a serious effort made to include Walton Street in the Tranche 2 travel bid.  She echoed the comments by Councillor John Howson with regard to the temporary bus gate.  A time frame for these various proposals would be useful. 

It was noted that two other submissions had been received.  The first from Richard Lofthouse supporting closure of Walton Street and the second from Gero Miesenböck objecting to the current form of closure because the traffic barrier was in the wrong location

The Cabinet Member for Environment thanked all the presenters and the positive and constructive way they had made their submissions.  She had been pleased to hear speakers from both points of view at the same meeting and in a formal council structure.  She noted the comment that mitigation measures proposed for St Bernard’s Roads had not been implemented and that needed to be investigated. A decision on the experimental TRO would be made before January 2021 but recognised that the bus gate, despite being an additional and separate temporary measure would have an impact and needed to be assessed.  Therefore, having regard to the information set out in the officer report and to the representations made to her at the meeting she confirmed her decision as follows:

 

to defer a decision on the continuation of the above experimental order pending further analysis and assessment of its impact with County officers maintaining contact over the next phase prior to a decision.

 

Signed…………………………………

Cabinet Member for Environment

 

Date of signing………………………..