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Frideswide Square, Oxford © Simon MacMichael.jpgOxfordshire County Council set to green light plan to get more people cycling
Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet is expected to give its go-ahead to plans to get more people cycling in the city, including increasing the number of trips made by bike by 50 per cent over the next decade.
The proposals to boost uptake of cycling by 2031 are set out in the Oxford Local Cycling & Walking Plan Infrastructure plan which will be discussed by councillors when the cabinet meets on Tuesday.
The aim is to increase the number of trips made by bike, whether for commuting, leisure or other purposes, from 300,000 per week to 450,000.
It also identifies key routes to and from villages and towns outside the city itself, aimed at encouraging more people to switch to active travel for their trips into and out of Oxford, including making the case for a strategic cycle network and Cycle Greenways.
Other elements of the proposals include reducing speed limits on some roads to improve the safety of cyclists, as well as targeting pavement parking.
In all, the plan identifies 28 walking and cycling schemes that have been provisionally costed at £300 million.
In December, it was submitted to the Department for Transport, and now incorporates the resultant feedback from central government.
It sits within the wider Connecting Oxford initiative in which the county council, working alongside Oxford City Council, is aiming to tackle congestion in the city.
Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for the environment, Councillor Yvonne Constance, said in a foreword to the plan, that the aim was for Oxford to “become a world class cycling city with an outstanding public realm for walking.”
You can read the plan, which has been drawn up with input from local cycling campaign group Cyclox and pedestrian campaign group OxPA, here.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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4 comments
5 miles is not a particularly long commute. I've always tried to live a good distance away from my place of work so I get to get going in the morning.
I rode the ncn5 from Reading to Oxford a while back, , lovely ride, got a bit lost around Didcot, odd signposting. But riding next to the big cooling towers was good, gone now I think.
But things only started to get a bit pants once I got to Oxford, the town was far from a cycling idyl, especially the bit around the train station. I didn't understand how on of our premier university cities, why of the two, didn't Oxford get the cycling thing? Cambridge just gets it, I'm guessing similar student numbers, maybe more in Oxford because of Brookes. Why not you Oxrord?
Bike lanes might be an inconvenience to important people who need to park outside their alma mater when coming up from London for college dinners. Then the explanation for the difference between Oxford and Cambridge would be as discussed here.
This is all about Oxford city, despite being a county council initiative, so little chance of getting a cycle path alongside the highly dangerous B4044 out of this pot of money.
Reading the report, it defines 5 to 8 kilometres to be a long-distance cycle commute, and only likely to be attempted by normal people if on an e-bike. Such an arduous slog will get you as far as Farmoor, halfway along that road. Clearly they reckon only freaks would consider Eynsham, at 10 km, to be a viable distance to cycle twice daily, much less Witney and the surrounding villages, or similar communities in other directions. So building something to keep the punishment-passing drivers away from such people would be too niche to be worthwhile, I guess.
Never mind that if you don't have two high salaries, aren't a boomer who already owns property in the city, don't qualify for social housing, and need more space than a bedroom in a flat share, then Eynsham is about as close as you can afford.
Seems a bit confused. A massive housing expansion is planned to the north of Abingdon, at an eminently cyclable 6-8 miles away. Abingdon is explicitly included in 'Oxon near (3-5 km)', but then later on it recognises that it's further than that and says it's 'relatively far' for cycling.
Not much point pushing ebikes at people living here if nothing is done to offer an alternative to the variety of unattractive routes currently available, as they simply won't be used.