Has Oxford a future?

Oxford's classic way of dealing with a problem is to defer it. There is wisdom in this, for many problems do disappear or solve themselves with time. The City's traffic problem has not been so obliging. Ever since the now famous Christ Church Meadow Road was first proposed by Dr Thomas Sharpe in 1948, the need for a southern relief road for Oxford, and the best route for it, have been under discussion. The latest of a series of public inquiries into amendments to the Oxford Development Plan has just finished. All the old arguments have been dusted and displayed. The novel element at this year's Inquiry has been the "people before cars" lobby, whose arguments are outlined in the Oxford Civic Society's booklet Let's LIVE in Oxford.

The 25-year long progression from Sharpe's decorous Merton Mall, through Buchanan to the present plan for 8 miles of urban motorway within the city limits shows very clearly the rise to power of King Car. Do we submit to this tyranny, or do we act to preserve the environment of our towns? The decision must be a national one, but the microcosm of Oxford serves to highlight the problem.

Most of our ancient cities are built to either a cross or a wheel pattern. Oxford has a central cross, Carfax. All the radials serving this central crossroads, which is the hub of both the city's commerce and the University, are overloaded, but the problem is most acute to the west. Here the spread hand of roads serving industrial Cowley, Headington, Marston and Iffley all converge on the slender wrist of Magdalen Bridge and the admired High Street. For long the port glasses in the senior common rooms of Magdalen, Queen's and University Colleges have tinkled to the thud of passing traffic. Now there is real danger that the college structures will be irreparably damaged by constant vibration. To save the High Street and Magdalen Bridge, the obvious route is to the south, where, beyond the university complex, are open meadows and the river Thames.

But other factors are also important in assessing Oxford's traffic situation. The city is completely encircled by a ring road, which is nowhere further than 3 miles from the centre. Congestion on the radial roads is worst, as one would expect, during the morning and afternoon rush-hours, but traffic surveys have established that commuters are responsible for only 40 percent of car movement; the remaining 60 percent consists of car journeys within the city. Public transport in Oxford is the monopoly of the City of Oxford Motor Services Ltd., a subsidiary of the National Bus Company. Largely due to delays caused by traffic congestion, the bus service is generally considered unsatisfactory. The City Council is building a large new shopping centre, the Westgate, in a central position to the south-west of Carfax, and has plans to develop other parts of St Ebbe's commercially.

In 1965 the City Council approved the original plan for a south relief road through the meadows between Christ Church and the river, despite the powerful opposition of the University. The road was vetoed by the Minister of Housing and Local Government in 1966. He advised the Council to commission a survey by a team of independent planning consultants. Oxford Central Area Study by Messrs. Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners, and Messrs. Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley, was published at the end of 1968. This report examined various road and traffic schemes, and recommended one (known as 'Scheme Doxo'), which has, in its turn, been approved by the City Council. This scheme was the subject of the Public Inquiry which has just ended.

Scheme Doxo is a total transportation scheme. It includes a public transport plan and a certain level of traffic restraint, as well as a road plan. The road plan requires the construction, over a 20 year period and at a cost of £31 million (1968 prices), of an urban motorway running north /south along the line of the railway to link the northern and southern by-passes; a south relief road, known as the Eastwyke Farm Route, which takes a line further south than the Meadow, but cuts through south Oxford and Hinksey Park to link St Ebbe's with the bottom of Headington Hill; and a by-pass for the western radial, Botley Road.

As well as introducing 8 miles of major road into this ancient city Scheme Doxo also requires the construction of five multideck car parks in central Oxford. These will range in car capacity from 600 to 4,000 vehicles. Oxford has little experience of such monsters. Cowley Centre, its only modern, purpose-built shopping precinct, has one for 500 cars, which is, by Oxford standards, quite a dominating structure. The proposed car park in St Ebbe's should house 4,000 cars. It will cover 8 acres, and even the consultants admit that "large car parks can be visually intrusive and dominate a particular view or an entire skyline". A local architect who has visited a multideck car park for 4,000 vehicles near Stockholm, has publicly stated his opinion that such a building will be totally out of scale in Oxford and will be a visual disaster in one of the world's most beautiful cities.

Destroyed by roads

Since the 1940s, it has been assumed that road building is the only possible solution to Oxford's traffic congestion. The Consultants' brief was to save the University streets from the pollution and visual degradation of heavy traffic. Assuming that all the parking restraints they envisage could be put into effect, Scheme Doxo could produce a reasonable environment in this special area. But this will be done at the expense of other parts of the City, which, far from benefiting, will suffer as grossly from traffic as if nothing were done at all. South and east Oxford will lose 174 houses, and will suffer the inevitable damage to a community which results from penetration by a major road. Headington, far from enjoying any relief, is threatened by the pincers of the south relief road at the foot of the hill and the London motorway at the top. Summertown shopping area will also be a traffic focus, with the link to the spine road at one end, and at the other the junction of Banbury Road with the new Marston Ferry Road, now under construction.

The destructive power of a major road in an urban environment can hardly be exaggerated. The houses actually demolished to provide the carriageway are only a small part of the total devastation. The fumes and dirt, above all the noise, cut a far wider swathe along which property is blighted.

Planners and councillors describe the areas affected as "of little architectural merit", and talk glibly of re-housing. But if the near-in residential districts are destroyed, and their inhabitants moved further out, this merely generates more traffic. People, strangely enough, like living close to the centre of a town, and find nothing wrong with these sturdily built Edwardian terrace houses. Property in Grandpont and Jericho is much sought-after, and these areas have a community life and spirit I which have yet to mature in the new \ estates of Rose Hill and Blackbird Leys. Sociologists are not popular at public inquiries. Their reports of mental disturbance caused by the uprooting of communities are dismissed as subjective and sentimental. Could this be because what they are saying is too true to be palatable?

The right of people to enjoy their homes in quiet, to walk about and see their children play in safety, is subordinated to the right of a minority to drive their cars when and where they want. In 1966, 46 percent of Oxford households had no car. The average car is in use for about 2 percent of its life. Car occupancy in Oxford, I quote from the Consultants' Report, is 1.58 persons per car on average. The logical conclusion of these facts is not to build more roads, but to devise some mode I of movement better suited to an urban environment, and indeed one which makes more sense economically.

The consultants and (following them) the City Council, believe that the public would refuse to accept stringent restraint of the car, and that the decline of public transport is bound to accelerate. This view, however, is not ( supported by any local evidence. The consultants' report includes no research into the wishes and ideas of Oxford ratepayers. A recent 3,500-signature petition asking the Council to reconsider the extension and improvement of public transport before committing the city to the expense and disruption of new roads has been officially ignored on the grounds that it was conducted by amateurs, and that "people will sign anything". When the consultants' report first appeared at the end of 1968 a number of public meetings were held in affected areas to discuss its implications, and an admirable digest appeared in the local press. These measures were considered adequate by the City Council to ensure that Oxford citizens know what is being planned for their city, and at what expense. In fact, the vast majority of Oxford people do not understand what is being planned and have no idea of the effect of the plan on the City's finances.

Other cities with major reconstruction plans, Leicester for example, have produced simple, written outlines of the proposals and made them available to the public at libraries and council offices. Another method of informing people about major planning development would be to send literature with the rate demands, which would ensure that all ratepayers at least, were properly informed. The Central Area Study is a long, technical document that costs £3. These considerations limit it to a strictly professional market. Oxford City Council is guilty of a serious failure in communication, since full knowledge of what is involved by all residents is the only satisfactory basis for the adoption of a plan which so vitally affects the life of the city.

The modal split

The crucial factor behind the consultants' report is what planners call "the modal split" - the division of total travel between private and public transport. The whole purpose of a transportation plan involving major new road construction is the assumption that car usage will continue to increase sharply, and that little can, or should, be done to stop it. If, instead of this, the assumption were made that the car is destructive to urban environment, and that strong measures are needed to protect that environment, then an entirely different type of plan would result. This is the basis of the attack made on Scheme Doxo by the Oxford Civic Society and other objectors at the 1970 Public Inquiry.

It will take 20 years to complete the road building described in the scheme; not for about 10 years will any benefit be experienced from any of the new roads. The consultants themselves, therefore, have postulated an interim stage when restraint of the car will have to be extremely strict. What they have failed to realise is the potential of public transport, since their Scheme X leaves Oxford's bus service very much in its present state. This failure is curiously old-fashioned, in view of what the government White Paper, Public Transport and Traffic, has to say:

"All the studies so far, from the Buchanan Report onwards, suggest that our major towns and cities can only be made to work effectively and to provide a decent environment for living by giving a new dynamic role to public transport, as well as expanding facilities for private cars. Unless we recognise this, we shall pull down the centres of our towns in an attempt to get rid of congestion; and at the end of the day we shall find congestion still with us, and the character of our towns destroyed."

To build new roads leading to central car parks may relieve congestion for a time in the older streets. But if American experience teaches anything, particularly the horror of Los Angeles, it is that the number of cars will always increase to fill the roads provided. The basis of an urban transportation plan today must be restraint of the car and the extension of public transport, and not primarily major road building. The obvious corollary to this is that car parks must be at the end of the city, not in the centre. Mr Leslie Smith, General Manager of Leicester City Transport, who is the pioneer of the "Park and Ride" experiment, believes that in 20 years every city will have to make use of this now controversial scheme.

It would be absurd to suggest that, with only 40 percent of car movement caused by commuters, Park and Ride is the complete answer to Oxford's traffic problems. It would, however, help tremendously to relieve pressure at the peak hours. Other measures would have to be considered to reduce car usage within the city. Traffic management to give buses priority over the car on a big scale (as in Reading, where bus usage has risen dramatically), must be courageously implemented.

Other possible ideas are routed taxis, minibuses within the central area, and extended and simplified car hire facilities. The great advantage of such experiments is that they are reversible. If they don't work, something else can be tried. A road, once built, is there for good. People are at last beginning to put a value on environment - something no less real because it cannot be assessed statistically. The Oxford Civic Society was started a year ago. It is one of many pressure groups forced into existence by the realisation that the fabric of urban life is under threat. It remains to be seen whether we have woken up too late - whether we have indeed missed the bus.