Ah Oxford, don’t you love it! Right first thing congratulations to Oxford for seriously attempting to provide local, easy to access services to your residents. Well done, but that has and should have absolutely nothing to do with trying to resolve your congestion issues. Oxford has a major congestion problem so needs a solution. They looked at a charging system as in London and an emissions system as in Birmingham, but both these systems adversely effect the poorest in their communities. So they needed a solution that solved the problem, but was fair to the people of Oxford. With this solution no-one is restricted from travelling anywhere in the City. The proposal simply means, on certain days and at certain times they must use the ring road to travel round Oxford before they pop back in to where they need to go rather than traveling through the city. Which, when you think about it, is one of the purposes of a ring road and talking to friends who live there is what they do anyway at peak times. Oh and they can ignore these restrictions 100 times a year with a free permit or if they work there, or if they have a blue badge, or if they are a delivery driver. It would be interesting to know before anyone knocks this solution what better solution they would propose to resolve the congestion in Oxford?
My fear is that if we are suspicious of everything then we risk stopping the good things as well as the bad. Providing walkable access to essential services for everyone is, I feel, one of those good things. But if I’m wrong and I ever feel our freedoms are threatened I will be the first to be standing shoulder to shoulder with you on the barricade.
