This is a DRAFT response to a consultation on the Greenways. Please let me know of any errors or omissions.
Planning Coherence
Having the university and city council as partners in the Greenways project is valuable, but there are downsides to yet another management body and accompanying siloisation. Ultimately decisions about the Greenways schemes have to be made by a county body which also manages the Strategic Active Travel Network, new or upgraded walking and cycling infrastructure accompanying highways schemes and developments, and upgrades to bridleways and other public rights of way. Otherwise we risk disconnected planning of the county-wide cycling network. It is also odd to have Oxford city council more closely involved than the district councils through which most of the Greenway routes will run.
This awkward management structure is already creating some confusion. A large fraction of the concerns and queries I have seen about the Greenways project relate to its omission of key routes - especially along the B4044, A4074, and A40 - which are already being evaluated as part of other projects. These are mentioned in the Greenways background materials, but many people don't look past the map. There needs to be a single web page, with a map, showing all the planned routes around the county and their current status. Members of the public should not be expected to understand the difference between a Greenway and a non-Greenway route, let alone the complex structure of county workstreams or the arcane mix of active travel funding sources.
Ring-Road Severance
The covering material says "the geographical scope for the project has been defined as the area that can be covered by cycle routes of up to 10 km from the Oxford Ring Road outwards". Having routes stop just outside the ring road and ignoring connectivity across that will leave some routes unusable by many people, or of limited use. In some cases, consideration of ring-road severance issues would suggest alternative routing.
A core strength of the Greenway approach is in providing complete, coherent routes, connecting up bits and pieces of infrastructure put in as part of highways schemes, housing developments, and so forth. Failing to address ring-road severance and to bring the routes all the way into central Oxford severance undermines this.
Wayfinding
Wayfinding should be coordinated at a county-wide (Strategic Active Travel Network) level, not at a Greenways level. People cycling around Oxfordshire want a consistent waymarking scheme, not one for (say) their route from Oxford to Eynsham and another for their route from Eynsham to Long Hanborough.
Several of the routes have sections that "may not be suitable for all users". Any waymarking system (and mapping) needs to distinguish between genuinely inclusive routes — accessible to anyone who can walk, wheel or cycle — and routes which might lack footways, or involve cycling on roads with motor traffic in significant volume (say >1000mv/day) or moving at speed (say a v85 over 25mph).
And the wayfinding needs to run right into the centre of Oxford. Even if the "Greenways" routes officially stop at the ring-road, people using them will need guidance to continue towards the city centre (which is in many cases going to be more complicated navigationally) or, coming out of the city centre, to reach them. This may be less of a problem for commuters, who can spend some time finding the best route and will have employers or colleagues to advise them, but is vitally important for recreational use. Someone arriving by train, intending to cycle to one of the villages around Oxford, really wants to be able to pick up a Greenway route somewhere nearby, or at least a single, clearly marked internal route that will take them to the start of the appropriate Greenway route.
Design Details
For the Greenways to be accessible - to people walking or cycling with children, less confident adults, and so forth, getting the design details right is essential. This is also key to making the routes genuinely attractive "Greenways" and not just generic cycling routes.
Cycling on carriageway, mixed with motor traffic, should only be part of the routes where motor traffic volumes are low (<1000mv/day) and traffic speeds are, or can be reduced to, around 20mph. If there are no footways and people are expected to walk on a carriageway shared with motor traffic, it is even more important to keep traffic volumes and speeds low. Where putting in proper off-road paths is impossible or too expensive, modal filtering should be considered.
Where people are walking or cycling alongside a road with either >20mph speeds or significant numbers of HGVs, all efforts must be made to provide a buffer of some kind between the path and the carriageway, and the larger the buffer the better: 30cm is better than nothing, and 80cm is better than 50cm. There is a huge difference, both psychological and practical, between having nothing between one and motor traffic but an ordinary kerbline, and having a raised kerb or other barrier (which might catch one if one slips or slides). The LTN 1/20 ("Cycle Infrastructure Design") minimums for buffers should not be used as targets, but improved on wherever possible, and the"absolute minimums" should only be acceptable where there are unresolvable physical space constraints.
In several of the route appraisals there are statements like "consider carriageway narrowing". Carriageway narrowing should be considered everywhere it is possible; as well as providing space for extra path width or buffering, it will also help to keep motor traffic speeds down. Space can be fairly easily reallocated by relining the carriageway and putting a buffer of some kind down its edge; it does not necessarily need a full carriageway rebuild.
And of course the crossings and junctions need to be safe and accessible.
For the Greenway routes to be attractive for commuting and faster recreational cycling, it is important that they support expeditious movement. The general design should support at least 16mph and preferably 20mph cycling speeds and any signal crossings need to be low latency (sub 20 second wait) and single stage (at least for cycling).
1 - Woodstock
It is hard to see this feeling at all like a "Greenway", given it is almost all alongside busy A roads. However it is an important route which could carry large volumes of cycling, with some shorter segments being heavily used by pedestrians. Several sections of this route have been recently improved, but a lot of it needs upgrading to be safe and accessible, and a "whole route" treatment will provide coherence and continuity.
The most important design elements will be making the along-road paths as comfortable and attractive as possible, with buffering from the carriageway, and making sure the crossings involved are safe and accessible — and feel safe.
The proposed route just gives up completely at the Wolvercote roundabout. That is no less important than any of the other crossings and junctions on the route, and indeed is likely to be the busiest of them all. If walking and cycling across the Wolvercote roundabout can not be significantly improved, then this route should either be routed along the canal path, like National Cycle Route 5, or to the Cutteslowe foot-cycle bridge.
2 - Otmoor
Sheperd's Pit will need filtering to be an accessible walking and cycling route. Any attempt to keep speeds to 20mph will either (most likely) fail or create an effective modal filter by making the alternative route via the B4027 and Bayswater Rd fater. It would be both cheaper and more effective to put in a modal filter, leaving very occasional farm access traffic.
There are already plans for a two-way cycle track along the west side of Bayswater Rd, south of Bayswater Brook, and upgrades to the underpass approaches, as part of the Land North of Bayswater Brook development. There may be room for other synergies, so planning for this route should be coordinated with that development.
Again, the proposed route stops just outside the ring-road, where connectivity is provided by an narrow subway which is unusable by larger cycles.
3 - Boars Hill
4 - Wootton
5 - Kingson Bagpuize
6 - Wytham
Other Routes
Other key routes include those along the A40, both east to Wheatley and west to Eynsham and Witney, to Berinsfield along both the A4074 and the Roman Road bridleway, and along the B4044 to Eynsham.