Bus firm hits back at critics

8:00am Sunday 26th November 2006

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OXFORD Bus Company has hit back at claims that buses are ruining Oxford's historic High Street.

With up to 2,500 buses a day travelling up and down the High, hotelier Jeremy Mogford warned that the city's famous street had become "a giant bus park."

But the managing director of Oxford Bus Company, Philip Kirk, said that fewer buses travelled along the High Street today than before the introduction of the Oxford Transport Strategy seven years ago, when all traffic was allowed in the High.

Mr Kirk said: "Two hundred buses per hour is an extremely low traffic flow for a road like the High Street. The other major roads in Oxford carry five or six times the volume of general traffic."

He hit out at those seeking to stoke up a mood of "hysteria about buses" by pretending no problems existed before restrictions on general through traffic were introduced.

Mr Kirk said: "There was never a golden age of traffic in the High Street. People who know Oxford will remember the constant stream of traffic from Carfax corner to Magdalen Bridge just about every hour of every day before OTS was introduced.

"I spoke last week to someone who said that before the OTS was introduced, the traffic was so bad she could be more than an hour late for appointments. Now, that never happens.

"But the true benefits of the OTS for the High Street will not be felt until there is a proper enforcement of the High Street bus gate, so that traffic that shouldn't go through doesn't."

Mr Kirk defence of present bus numbers follows complaints from Mr Mogford, who owns the Old Bank Hotel and Quod restaurant in High Street.

Mr Mogford complained that the High was no longer an attractive place to walk and shop. He said guests frequently asked to be moved from front bedrooms or tables near the street.

He called for a council rethink about its strategy and said he was preparing to fund an independent survey to confirm that bus numbers, and speeds and pollution levels, were out of control.

Mr Kirk said county council figures showed that in 1998, 2,569 buses travelled across Magdalen Bridge in the 12 busiest hours of the day, compared to 2,410 in May this year. And the buses today were much less polluting.

He added: "The population of Oxford has doubled in size since the 1930s but the number of buses using the High Street has only gone up by a third in that time. If the bus numbers had risen at the same rate as the population growth there'd now be over 3,200 buses using High Street in a 12-hour period."