People who think the new low traffic neighbourhoods in Oxford have created exceptional levels of congestion have forgotten how bad traffic was pre-pandemic. To see this, consider the following map, which shows a "cordon" around the Cowley and East Oxford low traffic neighbourhoods. This is taken from the county's Annual Average Daily Traffic Map and the little coloured circles mark traffic count points.
This table shows average traffic (in thousands of vehicles per day) at the various count points on that cordon, for 2018-2019 and for 2023-2024, and the percentage change between those. (I am using those dates for comparison because 2020 and 2021 were during the pandemic and the Cowley and East Oxford LTNs were put in in 2021 and 2022.)
| location | 2018-2019 average (000s/day) | 2023-2024 average (000s/day) | change |
| Magdalen Bridge | 21.35 | 15.05 | -30% |
| Marston Rd | 8.95 | 7.05 | -21% |
| Headington Rd | 8.1 | 7.1 | -12% |
| Warneford Lane | 9.4 | 5.05 | -46% |
| Hollow Way (north) | 10.4 | 8.9 | -14% |
| B480 (inside ring road) | 18.05 | 17.5 | -3% |
| Barns Rd (at bridge over rr) | 9.85 | 8.05 | -18% |
| A4158 (inside ring-road) | 19.65 | 18.6 | -5% |
| Donnington Bridge Rd | 14.05 | 11.55 | -18% |
| Cowley Rd Littlemore under ring-road (7am to 7pm) | 4.0 | 1.8 (2022) | -55% |
I had to specifically request the data in the last row, which comes from one-off counts.
So there are large reductions in traffic on Warneford Lane and Cowley Rd Littlemore (under the ring road), as one would expect, but also small to medium reductions on every other route in and out of the cordon. So there has clearly been a significant number of car trips into, out of, or through the area which have gone away - the overall change is a 19% drop from 123,000 motor vehicle movements per day across the cordon to 100,000.
But have the through trips just been displaced? The counts for some locations outside the area suggest not (Abingdon Rd has extra traffic because of the Botley Rd closure).
| location | 2018-2019 average (000s/day) | 2023-2024 average (000s/day) | change |
| ring-road (east of A4074) | 46 | 43.8 | -4% |
| Horspath Driftway | 19.6 | 19.05 | -3% |
| the Slade | 18 | 17.75 | -1% |
| Old Rd | 12.2 | 11.4 | -7% |
| Windmill Rd | 10.4 | 8.95 | -4% |
| Gipsy Lane | 6.5 | 5.3 | -18% |
| Headley Way | 12.4 | 12.3 | -1% |
| ring-road (past Brasenose Wood) | 33.5 | 32.7 | -2% |
| Abingdon Rd (south of Weirs Lane) | 19.65 | 22.7 | +16% |
This seems like robust evidence that a good number of car trips have stopped ("evaporated"). (And the larger drop on Gipsy Lane is as expected with Divinity-Warneford-Gipsy trips removed.)
Note that this is not a sign of an overall increase in car trips within the cordon, because there are clearly huge reductions on e.g. Howard St and Magdalen Rd not captured by this data. We also know that a lot of internal car trips have gone away from looking at the modal shift in schools, for example the 60% reduction (90 fewer) in children being driven to school at Larkrise Primary, removing perhaps 300 car trips a day.
Thank you for doing this
It would be wonderful if this factual information would stop the wild subjective statements by anti LTN people about increased traffic on the margins of LTNs
However I fear they will simply ignore it.