£13 million less to waste on roads in 2008

The Government has cut £13 million from the money which Oxfordshire County Council hoped to spend on transport schemes. In general one hopes for more rather than less to be diverted to one’s region by way of reciprocity for the huge sums one pays in tax, but this cut does at least spare us the sight of our money being thrown away before our eyes.

Social compact in New York streets

I was in New York recently, and marvelled at how it works compared with London or Oxford. Four things appealed in particular – the way the traffic flows across junctions, the absence of litter and the presence of policemen, and the fewness of nagging signs about things everyone knows anyway.

Now, I was in the better part of Manhattan where the street grid helps with the traffic, and New York is not exactly short of other signs and notices. The point about each of these observations is that it is policy, and not just (that is, not only) incompetent neglect, which makes the difference over here.

Judge attacks Cowley Road changes

A judge at Oxford County Court criticised the recent changes to the road layouts in Cowley Road as he awarded damages to a cyclist who was injured when a bus pulled out in front of him.

The injured man is reported in the Oxford Times as saying “If I hadn’t turned to avoid the bus, I might not have been here. The road narrows so dramatically, buses have to swing out into the road, meaning their back swings out. Its so dangerous. It is only a matter of time before somebody gets killed”.

Plain unnecessary works

Oxfordshire Highways, which is a kind of blind-leading-the-lame joint venture between Oxfordshire County Council and two other organisations, has started work at the Plain, the critical junction which connects East Oxford, London and Vladivostok with Oxford city centre.

This is the third and final stage in the long-drawn-out “improvement” to the High Street, which started at Carfax a year ago. The aim is threefold – to restore the surface which has been patched for years and does actually need attention, to bugger up the traffic flow at the roundabout, and to replace the existing set of signs and lines with a bigger, shinier set.

Police fine light-jumping cyclists

If you were about in Oxford’s Broad Street or Parks Road today, you could be forgiven for thinking that a terrorist attack was imminent. More policemen than I thought existed here were gathered in mobs. What had dragged them away from their paperwork?

It was a crack-down on cyclists jumping the lights at the King’s Arms junction. 93 people were fined £30 each, netting nearly £3,00o, until the police ran out of penalty notices.

I approve, though I am not sure why most of Thames Valley Police were needed. I have argued here that no amount of frigging around with the road layout will make a difference to the attitude of those who race across these lights. They do not need signs and lines and speed-tables and all the other junk which the weak-minded demand. Even the modern Oxford undergraduate, selected more for the disadvantage of his birth than for his brain or education, knows that this is both illegal and (more importantly) stupid.

I nearly got two of them last week as they cut across in front of my bonnet. My objection, as with the pedestrian who strolled across in front of me there a few days before, is that the “something must be done” whiners would have used the incidents to prop up their argument that the streets are dangerous and need more restrictions. It is not the streets which are dangerous but the users.

It is not just cyclists and pedestrians. I watched a taxi pull out of Magdalen Street East last week (white taxi, black driver in case you come across him yourself). He pulled out in front of two cyclists who were clearly visible, proceeding at a sensible pace and with the  right of way. It was not clear to me whether he was dim or rude. Either way, he does not deserve to hold a driving licence.

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People (and street works) cause accidents

As the mob continues to bay for street works at the King’s Arms, we look at the real cause of urban accidents – people and thoughtless tinkering with road layouts.

We are still no clearer as to the cause of the accident at the King’s Arms junction in central Oxford in which a student cyclist was dragged under the wheels of a dust-cart and killed. The arguments continue as to what (if anything) should be done at the junction.

We have the usual cries of “something must be done”, generally from people whose ignorance of the circumstances matches their lack of logic and their inability to relate an effect to its cause. They would have major works done here with lots of signs, lines, barriers and lights. See the Oxford Inciter post A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required for an critique of this approach.

Thames towpath repairs at Oxford

I have been down to see the works from Medley to Sheepwash Channel where the towpath has been crumbling for years. Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council suddenly found the money to make urgent repairs, apparently as a first phase of more comprehensive strategy to restore the path.

More on Oxford’s cycling “blackspots”

I commented adversely yesterday on the casual use by the student newspaper Cherwell of the word “blackspot” to describe the junction where a student was killed under a lorry last week.

By chance, I today came across a Cherwell article of 27 January 2006 headed “Risk factors for student cyclists” which was about a report by Oxford City Council on cycling hazards in the city. A number of “blackspots” were highlighted. They did not include the King’s Arms junction.

Black Spot for Student Journalists

I wrote yesterday (A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required) about the student killed at the end of Broad Street, commenting on how reason gets drowned out by the squeals of those who claim to have predicted and warned of this very thing, by demands that something must be done, and by the clatter of coins as highways officers and councillors rush to spend money so that they can be seen to be doing something.

Cherwell, the student magazine headlines the story with “Student killed at accident blackspot”. I am not sure how many casualties there are to one blackspot – more than a few are needed, I would say, before a stretch of road gets elevated to the status of “blackspot”, or we would need a new screamer word for somewhere really dangerous.

A cyclist dies at the lights – no action required

The usual response to an accident is that the authorities are to blame, that they were “warned” about just this risk and that something – anything – must be done urgently to make sure that this “death-trap”, this “accident waiting to happen”, is fixed. Clichés apart, that may have been true of the recent drowning at Medley, but it is not true at the King’s Arms cross-roads.

On 18 April a student cyclist died under the wheels of a rubbish truck at the cross-roads where Broad Street, Parks Road, Holywell Street and Catte Street meet by the Kings Arms. One gets rather cynical about the encomia poured over those who die young, but they seem to be justified in this case.

The facts and the result of the police investigation are not yet known. Like the talents and qualities of the deceased they are not relevant to the comments which have filled the on-line pages of the Oxford Mail. These fall into three broad categories: