Looking at the last three years (2022-4) of STATS19 data, there's a nasty cluster of cycling injuries through the Summertown shops - ten injuries, five of them serious. And earlier years are only a bit better (2017-19, 7 injuries, 2 of them serious). There were also 8 pedestrian injuries (2017-2024), four of them (including the two serious ones) on the service road. (Note that these are just the injuries that made it into the police database. That doesn't include all hospital admissions, let alone the vast bulk of minor injuries.)
cycling injuries, 2022-2024
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pedestrian injuries, 2017-2024
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Despite being 20mph, this is a much worse injury record than the 30mph sections of Banbury Rd to the north or south. For pedestrians this can be explained by the much higher footfall and demand for crossings of Banbury Rd on desire lines away from the crossings, and for people cycling by the complete lack of any separation from motor traffic. Cars turning in and out of the service road and the other entries, and parking blocking visibility, create additional hazards.
Even once the full panoply of demand management measures are deployed (traffic filters, Zero Emission Zone, Workplace Parking Levy) this stretch of Banbury Rd is going to be carrying many times the 2000 cars/day limit for inclusive cycling mixed with motor traffic - and that will always include a lot of buses and significant numbers of HGVs. So any redesign of the area must separate people cycling from motor traffic, which will require the removal of the service road and at least some of the parking. But that is something for the longer-term.
In the shorter-term, a few ideas:
- Make the signal crossings more responsive. This would reduce the number of people crossing in between them. It would also assist some cycle movements, as many people cycling use the pedestrian signals to turn onto Banbury Rd.
- Put central cycle symbols on the carriageway. If people cycled more centrally that would reduce risks from turning motor vehicles, as well as deterring overtakes.
- Narrow the carriageway to 6 metres (to match the width provided for two-way general traffic elsewhere on Banbury Rd). At the moment it is ~7.5m wide through the shopping area, which puts the implied lanes right in the 3.25 to 3.9 metres "do not have lanes this wide" in Active Travel England guidance. This could be done by widening the median between the main carriageway and the service road.
This would also shorten the distance pedestrians have to cross, deter drivers from overtaking people cycling, and keep speeds lower.
- Consider making the service road left-in-left-out by banning u-turns. (Compliance might be poor.)
- Charge for parking on the service road, to try to avoid the common situation where someone drives into it, fails to find a space, and then either parks illegally or just stops in the road waiting for a free space. (Would need to charge enough to keep some spaces clear.)
- Use bollards (or cycle parking) to make some of the illegal parking on the service road impossible. Do the same on the eastern side, if the landowners will cooperate.
- Put in ASLs at South Parade and Oakthorpe Rd/Diamond Place — these would help cycle right turns onto Banbury Rd.
- Ask the university to enforce parking restrictions on Ewert Pl, or put in bollards or cycle parking to prevent unauthorised parking there.