Barton West Inquiry: Hopes for 40mph limit on ring road abandoned (From The Oxford Times)

"A series of vague accusations from people who have been unable to visualise what we are proposing.”

Oh dear. Bit of a bluster there.

I can absolutely assure the council that many residents *can* "visualise" your rejected proposal. It's just that they have taken a mental cloth, wiped the virtual vaseline off the virtual lens first and then sharpened the virtual focus.

When I generated the 3D future, plans inside my head, I could audiolise the GPS device saying "At next (greenhill) roundabout - go straight on" as I approached from London going to North Oxford - straight through the city centre would be the technically quickest route.

Or in the event that I ignored the device, could just imagine going along the A40 at 40mph being saddened by looking at the private rental properties facing on to the road. Newspapers for curtains, junk in the garden and cars abandoned on the disputed territory of the muddy verge of the A40.

The City Council are barking !!! They plan a scheme to build houses alongside a major road then propose putting a pedestrian crossing across it. What planet are these nutters on.

The City Council has actually proposed putting THREE pedestrian crossings across the Northern Bypass, as well as the route from Northway for selected vehicles.

The Northern Bypass is the main route towards London, and it is part of a ring road which helps to reduce congestion in central Oxford. Putting four obstructions across the road will be dangerous as well as mad, and slowing the traffic will only cause more congestion.

Potty schemes like this one was one of the reasons why Labour-led and dominated Oxford City Council removed planning from the public domain, before finally closing down Area Commitees and replacing with socialist autocracy. All this isn't about providing much-needed housing in an already over-bloated city, but about the Labour addiction to mono-focussed control and power. Yet, rather like the rise of Hitler and his cronies, 'someone' in Oxford keeps voting for Labour City and County councillors .......

At last a bit of common sense. Many people will not remember that back in 1987 there was a government and county council backed plan to build a dual carriage way from the end of the A40 bypass east of Witney going around North Oxford but through the North Oxford Golf Club and rejoining the existing Northern Bypass at Marston. There was a follow up stage that would have extended this new A40 from Marston northeast of Oxford completely, connecting at some undisclosed point to the A40 east of Sandhills or perhaps, as was mentioned by the design engineers at the public consultation, to or nearer to the M40.
Unfortunately there was very little public support but neither very little public opposition except from the members of the North Oxford Golf Club who caused delay so that the whole project was lost when a massive reduction in roads investment was introduced by the then government. That is why we now, 25 years later, have an A40 unfit for the volume of traffic using it today. If you want to build along the A40 northern bypass, impose a S.106 requirement requing the 1987 scheme to be built. You could then have as many pedestrian crossings on the old A40 as you wanted as the road would become purely a local road for local traffic.

and good too. Dual carriage ways are designed to transports lots of traffic quickly not lots of traffic stationary (tho that happens in oxford anyways!)

Myron Blatz wrote:
Potty schemes like this one was one of the reasons why Labour-led and dominated Oxford City Council removed planning from the public domain, before finally closing down Area Commitees and replacing with socialist autocracy. All this isn't about providing much-needed housing in an already over-bloated city, but about the Labour addiction to mono-focussed control and power. Yet, rather like the rise of Hitler and his cronies, 'someone' in Oxford keeps voting for Labour City and County councillors .......

Well said, why do people vote for them? They abolished the Area Commitees supposedly to save money and yet they advertise non-jobs such as this:
Environmental Development
Post title: Workplace Travel Co-ordinator (Job no: Z995)
Salary: Grade 6 - £25,472 per annum (pro rata)
Contract: Fixed Term - 24 hours per week for 12 months

Main Duties & Responsibilities
• To be responsible for the development, promotion and implementation of the
Council’s Workplace Travel Plan, in line with the travel hierarchy, to deliver
modal shift to more sustainable choices.
• To work with public transport providers, other appropriate organisations and
businesses to facilitate improved opportunities for sustainable travel choices.
• To forecast, collect, record and report data on reduced CO2 emissions from
the implementation of sustainable transport choices.

mytaxes wrote:

Myron Blatz wrote:
Potty schemes like this one was one of the reasons why Labour-led and dominated Oxford City Council removed planning from the public domain, before finally closing down Area Commitees and replacing with socialist autocracy. All this isn't about providing much-needed housing in an already over-bloated city, but about the Labour addiction to mono-focussed control and power. Yet, rather like the rise of Hitler and his cronies, 'someone' in Oxford keeps voting for Labour City and County councillors .......

Well said, why do people vote for them? They abolished the Area Commitees supposedly to save money and yet they advertise non-jobs such as this:
Environmental Development
Post title: Workplace Travel Co-ordinator (Job no: Z995)
Salary: Grade 6 - £25,472 per annum (pro rata)
Contract: Fixed Term - 24 hours per week for 12 months

Main Duties & Responsibilities
• To be responsible for the development, promotion and implementation of the
Council’s Workplace Travel Plan, in line with the travel hierarchy, to deliver
modal shift to more sustainable choices.
• To work with public transport providers, other appropriate organisations and
businesses to facilitate improved opportunities for sustainable travel choices.
• To forecast, collect, record and report data on reduced CO2 emissions from
the implementation of sustainable transport choices.

"To forecast, collect, record and report data on reduced CO2 emissions from the implementation of sustainable transport choices."

Well, that's hardly difficult is it?

Use available data where possible (home postcodes and work postcodes of staff is a good starting point). Use travel claims for additional data. Use fuel receipts for business use of vehicles.

Might take a few days to sort out initially. But once the data is identified, do an automatic query once a week from the relevant server and the reporting should run itself. Every so often go out and about with a clipboard to look busy and email out Doodle polls.

Job done!

West Oxon Webwatcher wrote:
At last a bit of common sense. Many people will not remember that back in 1987 there was a government and county council backed plan to build a dual carriage way from the end of the A40 bypass east of Witney going around North Oxford but through the North Oxford Golf Club and rejoining the existing Northern Bypass at Marston. There was a follow up stage that would have extended this new A40 from Marston northeast of Oxford completely, connecting at some undisclosed point to the A40 east of Sandhills or perhaps, as was mentioned by the design engineers at the public consultation, to or nearer to the M40.
Unfortunately there was very little public support but neither very little public opposition except from the members of the North Oxford Golf Club who caused delay so that the whole project was lost when a massive reduction in roads investment was introduced by the then government. That is why we now, 25 years later, have an A40 unfit for the volume of traffic using it today. If you want to build along the A40 northern bypass, impose a S.106 requirement requing the 1987 scheme to be built. You could then have as many pedestrian crossings on the old A40 as you wanted as the road would become purely a local road for local traffic.

Unfortunately NO common sense. If you read the article a 50mph limit is preferred. R.E. your A40 dualling. I think you may be a wee bit amiss there. There were two plans. The first was from the north of Oxford to the current dual carriageway at Witney which was cancelled after the 1979 election, the second was the so called "tin hat" bypass which would have taken all traffic away from Green Rd And Cutteslowe roundabouts, which for some strange reason was objected to by both Barton and North Oxford residents. Neither of which went anyway near North Oxford Golf club. If both projects had gone ahead we would now not suffer the congestion on the ring road that we now do.

Sorry. Read "anywhere near" the golf club, not "anyway".

The fact that the building of flats right next to the A40 has been knocked on the head is excellent. After all, two-thirds of those consulted did not want it.

The proponents of the fantastical boulevard should apologise for scaring residents. Making it a place for the poorest social housing seems to be straight out of the Nazi planners handbook.

The really scary thing now is the pompous, patronising, racist, class warriors comments from those not living anywhere near the area of this planned development of New Barton.

One of them wanted New Barton to get a pub so New Barton residents could be stopped from swamping Old Headington's pubs.

Northway residents would be very unhappy to hear our Action Group had not read the plan. Surely the issue of the bus pathway from the A40 through the estate was of more concern, as well as the potential of a road from Ruskin's Field to Foxwell Drive.

The developers said 850-900 homes, not 1,200.

Whopper w/o Pickle Cornmarket St wrote:

West Oxon Webwatcher wrote: At last a bit of common sense. Many people will not remember that back in 1987 there was a government and county council backed plan to build a dual carriage way from the end of the A40 bypass east of Witney going around North Oxford but through the North Oxford Golf Club and rejoining the existing Northern Bypass at Marston. There was a follow up stage that would have extended this new A40 from Marston northeast of Oxford completely, connecting at some undisclosed point to the A40 east of Sandhills or perhaps, as was mentioned by the design engineers at the public consultation, to or nearer to the M40. Unfortunately there was very little public support but neither very little public opposition except from the members of the North Oxford Golf Club who caused delay so that the whole project was lost when a massive reduction in roads investment was introduced by the then government. That is why we now, 25 years later, have an A40 unfit for the volume of traffic using it today. If you want to build along the A40 northern bypass, impose a S.106 requirement requing the 1987 scheme to be built. You could then have as many pedestrian crossings on the old A40 as you wanted as the road would become purely a local road for local traffic.

Unfortunately NO common sense. If you read the article a 50mph limit is preferred. R.E. your A40 dualling. I think you may be a wee bit amiss there. There were two plans. The first was from the north of Oxford to the current dual carriageway at Witney which was cancelled after the 1979 election, the second was the so called "tin hat" bypass which would have taken all traffic away from Green Rd And Cutteslowe roundabouts, which for some strange reason was objected to by both Barton and North Oxford residents. Neither of which went anyway near North Oxford Golf club. If both projects had gone ahead we would now not suffer the congestion on the ring road that we now do.

Oops I was a few years out there. I meant the 1997 election.

Build a bypass on the Green Belt and make Barton an island.

Stupid idea.

That's why we love the Green Belt next to Barton.

The A40 was detrunked over a decade ago.

What's wrong with a few bridges? Like the one across the dual carriageway at Cuttleslowe.