Agenda item

Cabinet Member: Environment

Forward Plan Ref: 2019/061

Contact: Joanne Fellows, Infrastructure Locality Lead Tel: 07990 368897/Stewart Wilson, Principal Transport Planning Officer Tel: 07801 740354

 

Report by Director for Planning & Place (CA11).

 

The report outlines Connecting Oxford proposals - further traffic restrictions across Oxford and a workplace parking levy in Oxford's Eastern Arc - and the transport, environmental and other benefits it could deliver for Oxfordshire. A timetable and costs for the work required to design a detailed scheme and develop a DfT compliant business case, which will thoroughly assess a range of scheme benefits and impacts, are contained within the report. Initial proposals were recently subject to an extensive engagement exercise and the report confirms the main findings.

 

In addition, the report sets out the need for further consultation and engagement. It is proposed to develop a detailed scheme and business case between January/February 2020 and Autumn 2021. A decision is required on whether to proceed on this basis (with the necessary funding to undertake this work already secured from the Housing & Growth Deal).

 

The Cabinet is RECOMMENDED to endorse the overall approach proposed as the basis for further scheme and business case development of Connecting Oxford proposals in partnership with Oxford City Council.

Cabinet considered a report which outlined Connecting Oxford proposals - further traffic restrictions across Oxford and a workplace parking levy in Oxford's Eastern Arc - and the transport, environmental and other benefits it could deliver for Oxfordshire. A timetable and costs for the work required to design a detailed scheme and develop a DfT compliant business case, which would thoroughly assess a range of scheme benefits and impacts, were contained within the report. Initial proposals were recently subject to an extensive engagement exercise and the report confirmed the main findings.

 

Ms Alison Hill speaking as Chair of Cyclox (the cycle campaign for Oxford), welcomed Connecting Oxford as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the way people travelled in the city. They believed in approving this, the Council would be the first in the UK to tackle the problems of congestion in such a radical way.

 

Ghent in Belgium a medieval university city like Oxford, had demonstrated that it was possible to switch attitudes overnight. Streets were blocked to motorists one Sunday evening in 2017 and to the disappointment of the waiting media – there was no wailing, no gnashing of teeth, no gridlock. Motorists had found that, while their journeys were longer in distance, they took less time because there were fewer fellow travellers on the roads. Motor vehicles used to make up 55% of trips in Ghent – that number had now fallen to 27%.

 

There would inevitably be resistance as this was a huge change. CoHSAT offered support through engagement with their collective membership and with the local communities, by promoting the plans, and providing or obtaining expert advice in taking the next steps to making Connecting Oxford a reality and increasing its ambition.  She urged the Cabinet to approve the bold plan.

 

Councillor Constance, Cabinet Member for Environment thanked Ms Hill for her strong support and offer of assistance to reach the general public.

 

Mr Robin Tucker speaking as Chair of Oxfordshire Cycling Network and a member of the Oxfordshire Strategic Transport Forum and of the coalition for Healthy Streets and Active Travel, welcomed the proposals for Connecting Oxford. In a recent Government Survey, 74% agreed that everyone should reduce how much they use their motor vehicles in urban areas for the sake of public health.  The impact of climate crisis had reached a dramatic level, yet traffic increased year on year.  People understood the need for change but found it difficult to change long established habits.  It was up to the Council as policy makers to carry people in the right direction.

 

As well as individual benefits, Connecting Oxford enabled a positive transformation of the City, new spaces for people, supporting education and business became possible.

 

He urged the Cabinet to adopt the plan and offered their help to develop the details and to help engage with communities.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Mr Tucker for his comments, particularly around the emphasis on improvement on the public realm Hill. She reported that Birmingham had plans to stop all cars driving into the city centre.

 

Councillor Corkin, Cabinet Member for Cherwell Partnership, endorsed the importance of getting people over the hump of scepticism.  Engagement and co-production in the process would be key.  The Council needed to bold and brave to implement the Plan.

 

Councillor Hudspeth, Leader of the Council endorsed the points made.  People needed to understand that everyone was part of the congestion, not just the car in front.  He looked forward to working with the groups.

 

Councillor Mark Lygo, local member explained that everyone appreciated the work being carried out by the City and County Council to reduce car use - to do nothing was not an option, but that there was concern from the residents of Marston Road and surrounding area, and the Parish Council regarding the need to collect more evidence for the scheme, including further modelling and a pilot for the Marston Ferry Road Bus Gate, looking at the hours of operation prior to it being implemented.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Councillor Lygo for bringing forward the views of the people of that area.  The whole intention now would be to go out with more detailed proposals towards a business case, and details such as hours of operation, where the bus gate would be located, would all be addressed as part of the information collected now on how to proceed.  She confirmed that there would be further modelling, but that she could not promise a pilot.

 

Referring to the lessons learnt from the Access to Headington scheme, Councillor Lygo stressed the importance of engagement and communication and public meetings, so that local residents felt listened to.

 

Councillor Liz Brighouse spoke as local member representing her residents.  Although this scheme was called Connecting Oxford, it only really effected one part of the City, and those residents felt they were being disadvantaged.  Her division had some of the best cycle tracks in the City, but they were piecemeal and didn’t connect with anything.  There was a need going forward to ensure anything that was carried out was cohesive. 

 

Residents were concerned that the proposed Bus Gate at Holloway would put traffic back onto the Eastern Bypass which was already heavily congested and the junction at Aldi’s even worse.  However, the main issue that concerned residents was the workplace parking levy, particularly for schools, whose budgets were struggling.  Most people who worked at schools worked outside of the City.  This would cause great difficulty.  Recruitment and retention were already a major problem.

 

A workplace levy for schools had to be equitable.  It would not be fair to push this extra financial burden only to one area of schools.  She accepted that a bus service would reduce the impact of the scheme, but she believed it would not be reduced significantly or quickly enough.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Councillor Brighouse for raising those important points which would be in consideration at this stage of the consultation.  However, it was not just about the workplace parking levy and the bus gates.  The point of the workplace parking levy was to deliver a new bus service which would run every 7 minutes on roads that would be empty of congestion, between Abingdon and kidlington, to wherever they needed to go.  The intention was the bus would be 24 hours a day.  The timing of the bus gates, the cost and the subsidy of it was all to be considered.  Far from being disadvantaged, residents would have controlled parking zones to stop parking from the bus gates and they would have a regular bus service that would be within a ten-minute walk from anywhere in the Eastern Arc, less congested streets, cleaner air and a vast improvement in the public realm.  They would be the most preferred residents in Oxford.

 

Councillor Brighouse strongly disagreed.  She felt that if you were putting a charge on a small group of schools in the Eastern Arc, but to no other schools in the City, they were disadvantaged.

 

Councillor Bartholomew, Cabinet Member for Finance agreed with the Leader’s comments, that there was a need to change the philosophy that everyone one else, but you created congestion.  To be fair there was a need not to make any group of people ‘special cases.  This was a carrot approach, not just a stick in the form of the high frequency, subsidised non-congested bus route.  Lots of work would be carried out to ensure it was a firm but fair approach.

 

Councillor John Howson spoke as local member on behalf of his division.  Much of his division was in the Parking Levy proposals.  Residents of his division would only enter or exit when the bus gates were in operation via the ring road. They would have two entry points on the Banbury and Woodstock Roads, but it would be hard to comment on this until the timing of the gates was known.

 

The Marston Ferry Link Road carried between 10,000 and 20,000 vehicles a day, a bus every 7 minutes with about 70 passengers would add around spaces, which would add around 5,000 passenger spaces every 12 hours in that direction, only a proportion of which, would be in the rush hour.  If Summertown was included in the WPL, the bus would have to cope with the displaced car users from that area as well.  Although he recognised that the bus service was a carrot, it was not enough of a carrot, especially in the rush hour.

 

For residents living near the Canal, a journey to the Churchill hospital would be a nightmare – there was a need to ensure some equality of treatment. He failed to see logic behind the simultaneous introduction of bus gates and a WPL and how they integrated together.  He asked the Cabinet to consider just implementing the bus gates first to see what happened.  He would also prefer to see congestion charging introduced at the 14 points of where the Ring road met the radial routes into Oxford. 

 

He questioned why there was no mention of Oxford Rail Network and the Oxford Cowley Branch and a revived rail line to Witney.  He further questioned why there was no mention of any proposals to immune rate the effects of tourist buses within his division.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Councillor Howson for his contribution and agreed that many of the proposals needed to be worked out, including the impact on the boundaries.  Times of operation, numbers of passengers the buses could carry and the impact on the residents by the Canal would all be considered.  In relation to railway, if they had to wait for the railway it would delay things for years.  Congestion management could not depend upon the railways.

 

Councillor Hudspeth reported that the rail connectivity study that had been undertaken with Network Rail would be coming before the Cabinet shortly, there would be recommendations coming forward and people would be able to see what sums of money were involved.  There were proposals to have 4 trains an hour from Hanborough, into Oxford and then into London by 2024.  The Cowley Branch Line was dependent on the Grenoble Road development.  It was important that they got on with what was practical and achievable to tackle congestion now.

 

Councillor Susanna Pressel spoke as local member in support the proposals set out in the report; for the bold vision; for the workplace parking levy (WPL) (which she had suggested 6 years ago) and for working so effectively with the City Council and other partners.

 

The bus gates especially, but also the WPL would be a bitter pill for some people to swallow. She felt strongly that more was needed to sweeten that pill. Even at this early stage, there was a need to be able to point to measures that the Council were bringing in now to encourage people to leave their cars at home and to switch to other means of travel. There was a need more and better bus routes, and not just in the Eastern Arc; more and safer cycle lanes and far more secure cycle parking. But above all, there needed to be much better maintenance of the roads and pavements in the City. Uneven footways and crumbling, pot-holed roads could put off all but the most intrepid cyclists. City Council and ODS staff did their best, but they had been unfairly starved of money for many years. She requested that the Cabinet review the way the available County Highways budget was divided up among the five district councils, and to take into account wear and tear as well as simply the length of the roads, and to take pavements into account.

 

She further requested that the Cabinet look closely at how the recent extra government money for potholes had been shared out, as she believed none of it has reached the City so far and would not help the Connecting Oxford project to succeed.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Councillor Pressel for her contribution and support.  In relation to the need for ‘a sweetener’ now, was difficult due to funding, but they would be introducing 9 residents parking zones ahead of the introduction of congestion management, and the had ambitions for 17 more.  Congestion management would result in more and better bus routes.  She agreed with Councillor Pressel on the maintenance of highways and pavements in the City and would be looking for funding.  They had not yet received an of the £2 billion funding for potholes from the Government.

 

Councillor Hudspeth suggested that there needed to be a review to see whether Oxford Direct Services were providing the service they were paid to do.  Councillor Constance agreed that it could be useful to have a review to ensure the allocation of the funding was right.

 

Councillor Buckley speaking as local member broadly supporting the proposals. He was however concerned that the proposals would unfairly affect some residents and commuters.  Huge care was needed to counter the inevitable and divisive view of unfairness that will emerge in the City.  All that he spoke to thought the workplace levy in only part of the City very unfair.  It’s justification of the new bus route did not wash.  He urged the Cabinet to make the levy city wide as far as the ring road.  He believed that many parts of the City without a cpz would be clogged with commuter cars looking for somewhere to park.  And that before the congestion measures came in all residents that could be affected by the proposals should get a CPZ (if they wanted one).

 

He agreed with the use of bus gates in principle but warned it would need very carful planning.  In particular the Northern Sector with 3 bus gates became a funnel meaning that the entire section would have to go north through an already heavily congested Wolvercote and Cuttleslow roundabout.  The consequence of adding further congestion to the ring road and those roundabouts must be addressed prior to any of the proposals going ahead.

 

He believed the current high level of congestion in the city was a deterrent itself and worried that the new congestion free zone would encourage shoppers back into their cars and suggested further measures such as cheaper Park and Ride and reducing on street parking in the City.

 

Councillor Constance thanked Councillor Buckley for his contribution and asked him to put his speech into the formal consultation so they could pick up all the points.  She agreed with the point that outside the ring road would need cpz.  She also agreed that they would need to provide Park and Ride and the cost would be considered.  She agreed that the funnelling in the North would need looking at.  Parking spaces and the time you can spend at them is slowly being reduced.  She did not agree with introducing the WPL across the City.  There was evidence that WPL only worked if there was a tangible advantage.

 

Councillor Bartholomew, Cabinet Member for Finance reminded members that it would be the job of the Steering Group, Officers and the Consultation process to try and resolve all the issues in a broad and fair approach.

 

Eric Owens, Deputy Director for Growth & Place and Joanne Fellows in introducing the report, set out the need for further consultation and engagement. It was proposed to develop a detailed scheme and business case between January/February 2020 and Autumn 2021. This would include significant public engagement to work up the proposal in much more detail and could be followed by a Public Inquiry in June 2021.  Subject to the outcome of the inquiry, a request to the Department of Transport for approval and if they did decide to go ahead with a WPL a request to the Secretary of State for approval.

 

Councillor Constance confirmed that SoS approval was only needed for the WPL and not the bus gates and that the Public Inquiry would be held due to the scale of the proposal and not because it was required. 

 

Councillor Lawrie Stratford, Cabinet Member for Adult Services and Public Health welcomed the proposals and highlighted that the effects would be Countywide.

 

Councillor Judith Heathcoat welcomed the proposal but felt that the trade and economic effects of the proposals, particularly footfall within the City Centre needed to be carefully looked at and that local elections Purdah needed to be taken into account when setting the date for Public Inquiry.

 

Councillor Ian Hudspeth welcomed the broad support for the proposals, understanding the individual concerns.   He expressed the importance of the scheme to achieve Modal shift.  He moved the recommendation.

 

RESOLVED:to endorse the overall approach proposed as the basis for further scheme and business case development of Connecting Oxford proposals in partnership with Oxford City Council.