Lib Dems succeed in pushing at 20mph open door

The latest edition of the Oxford Lib Dems circular proudly boasts of their success in persuading Oxfordshire County Council to agree unanimously to impose a 20 mph limit on all non-arterial residential roads in Oxford. The screaming headline “Lib Dems win on 20 limits” and the breathless account of the victory might give the impression that startling flights of oratory and skilful negotiation were needed. In fact, agreement to the measure has long been inevitable. What is more important – and deeply depressing – is why this should be so.

Desecrated Oxford in the Times

A letter under the title Oxford desecrated appeared in the Times of 19 May. The writer refers to the honeyed rhythm, curve, quality and dramatic punctuation of the High and says:

The road itself is not a smooth surface sending the eye to the gorgeous gold of the stone, but a pock-marked way, cluttered with signs, part-barriers and the other detritus of modern traffic management. It is as if some monstrous urban planner has, with calm deliberation, set upon a path of destruction. And it is impossible to believe that any other great city would visit such horrors on such beauty.

He wonders if we could engage some Oxford minds on the subject.

The Islamic Centre casting vote

One of this column’s principles is that no battle is too old to give up, and that we must keep alive the memories of former mistakes to prevent their like happening again. I will happily keep kicking the corpses of long-dead councillors and officials to remind their successors that the evil that men do lives after them, particularly where planning matters are concerned.

Oxfordshire transport head on High horse

There is a letter in this week’s Oxford Times from Steve Howell, Head of Transport at Oxfordshire County Council. He is terribly upset about complaints reported the previous week from the Warden of All Souls amongst others, who protested about the vandalism perpetrated the length of Oxford’s High Street by the uncultured, insensitive oafs of Oxfordshire County Council.

Howell boasts of the work already done to the High with paving and road surfaces improved with a de-cluttering of signage where possible. He goes on:

I, therefore, slightly resent the undertones that that we are cold and unfeeling towards the heritage of the High Street and its status as an Oxford gem.

I saw no such undertones in the reported comments. The paper’s short report included expressions like “vandalism”, “ill thought-out”, “too appalling to contemplate”, “a thoughtless proposal from engineers who have studied maps, not organisations or people”, “further vandalism of the High Street”, “a sorry sight in terms of signage, street furniture, eyesore boxes and machines”. If Howell thinks these are merely “undertones” then his skin is as thick as his head.

£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”.

Digging up the Cowley Road again

It is only a few months since Oxfordshire County Council did major works in the Cowley Road. Their “improvements”, allegedly on grounds of safety, led a correspondent in the Oxford Times to ask if the highways officers were seeking revenge for some childhood injury at the hands of a cyclist by creating a series of death-traps.

Certainly I find it more dangerous as an occasional driver there, as cyclists negotiate the chicanes and dodge the buses. These used to proceed in a straight line, but now dart in and out of the expensively curved bays and round the obstructions deliberately placed in their way by the unthinking dead-heads of County Highways.

Expect more Highways junk at Aristotle Lane

My post Come to see how not to do it at Aristotle Lane is answered by a reader who saw a similar group of local authority types standing at the end of Aristotle Lane on a different occasion last week. Like me, he fears another round of expensive unnecessary works here.

The usual pattern is that someone complains that her little boy is due to start at the school next year and might be afraid of the possibility that he might come within yards of being run over if he ran into the road when a car was anywhere near. She is joined by that regiment of North Oxford busybodies who forever think that “something must be done”. We pay all that money in Council Tax, they say, oblivious to the fact that if less money was wasted on unnecessary road works the Council Tax might actually go down.

Come to see how not to do it at Aristotle Lane

I came across this little party yesterday afternoon, standing amongst the 15 pillars, posts and other clutter which Oxfordshire County Council has dumped at the end of Aristotle Lane.

Small groups hanging around in Aristotle Lane are usually waiting for their dealer to arrive, but not generally at school-out time, not at the primary school anyway. They look like local authority employees, I decided – that look of tired-biscuits-left-on-a-dusty-shelf which identifies those who trudge the corridors of councils everywhere.

Oriel Square put out to grass

A quarter of a century or so ago, I visited Ostia Antica, the long-abandoned port outside Rome. Now, I expect, it has a visitor centre, lavatories and car parks, and all the shoddy gloss which bureaucrats and tourist boards throw up to make everywhere look the same as they dig their snouts into the heritage trough.

Then it was just a few old buildings in a field, the plots and streets clearly delineated, evoking a clear picture of how it used to be and how far it had fallen, the grass pushing up through the old stones redolent of a lost civilisation.

You get much the same feeling of lost civilisation in Oriel Square now. The square is ruined anyway by the ugly monuments beloved of uncultured bureaucrats, in this case the bollards and other street furniture erected by the insensate oafs of Oxfordshire County Council’s highways department (see What a load of bollards in Oriel Square), an act of vandalism by people too thick to understand what they are ruining.

What a load of bollards in Oriel Square

Oriel Square was a bustling, pretty little place when I first knew it, as an undergraduate in the 1970s. I lived round the corner for two years and crossed it every day. Oriel College is beautiful even amongst its peers, in large part because you can stand back and look at it across the square. You could park there then, and the place was alive with cars, bikes and pedestrians.

It is a soulless place now, dragged down by the dead hand of council bureaucrats for whom it is just a street, by dim, dull little people with no cultural roots, no sensibility or sensitivity, no faculties to appreciate beautiful things.

Welcome to Summertown

There used to be a notice at each end of Summertown saying “Welcome to Summertown”. There were various reasons for disliking these, apart from the vulgarity of that superfluous “Welcome to” – for a start, it doubled the amount of metalwork in a road already full of silly little signs.

The main reason, though was the mismatch between the proclaimed welcome and the reality. Here, for example is what you find if you actually try and visit Summertown.

Pedestrians cross here

A recent post called Rubbish and Graffiti by the Oxford Canal looked at the bridge which carries Frenchay Road across the Oxford Canal. Planners, developers, highways officers, British Waterways and the police have, by their acts or their omissions, turned this little stretch of canal into an urban pit of bad design, graffiti, notices, overflowing bins and general neglect.

I said in that context that it seemed that “a little man from Oxfordshire County Council goes down the pavements with a tape measure and fills every gap of more than a certain length with a pole and a notice”. Only two such notices are visible from the towpath, but this proves to be just a small selection.

You can see that the little man was a bit stuck for a suitable sign to put on the end of the bridge, but desperate to fill the space. “Pedestrians cross here” appears at first sight to be a statement of the obvious – pretty well everyone is cross at the mess made here by the various officious bodies.

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.

Signs of no cultural hinterland in Oxford

I wrote a post a few days ago called Signs obscuring the sights of Oxford about the forest of metal obscuring the view of the Clarendon Building. I was trying to work out how anyone could do this, could be so blind to beautiful things that he could stick signs up in front of everything.

Signs obscuring the sights of Oxford

The photograph shows the Clarendon Building in Oxford, a fine stone building erected in 1711-1713 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor. Hawksmoor was responsible for the towers of All Souls, for the front to Westminster Abbey, for some beautiful East London churches and for finishing off Blenheim Palace.

It is beautiful. It is important for itself, for its architect and for the man after whom it was named, Lord Clarendon, whose History of the Great Rebellion partly paid for it.

To the thick oaf in charge of signage and street furniture in central Oxford , it is just a building, a pile of old stone. He has split the view of its facade with a tall pole adorned with big bright signs.The really obtrusive one, the big blue cycle route sign pointing to the left, is new.

Oxfordshire councillor cites public opinion

I have just put up a post Oxford traffic lights could come down about the near-certainty that Oxfordshire County Council will give no serious thought to the possibility of reducing the number of traffic lights and other controls in Oxford’s streets. The idea had been raised in this week’s Oxford Times.

David Robertson, the county council member responsible for transport, is quoted in the same article as saying “I’m not sure whether public opinion is ready for shared space in this country”. Robertson deserves an essay to himself, as much for his contempt for democracy as for his failings at transport.

This is the man who bullied his way to the imposition of residents’ parking fees in Oxford with a mock “consultation”, and then made a decision in defiance of known resistance without waiting for the outcome of the consultation.

He treats with contempt anyone whose views do not accord with his own, and believes that democracy means that the winner can force his views on everyone else. So it is odd to find him now paying any regard to his guess at public opinion and calling it in aid of his put-down for the idea of bare streets.

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Oxford traffic lights could come down

“City traffic lights could come down” screams the Oxford Times headline. “Radical shared space scheme being considered”. The implication is that Oxfordshire County Council may consider the removal of some traffic lights and the other junk which they have spent the last 30 years sticking up all over Oxford.

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.