Oxford's roads have been relatively unchanged over the last fifty five years - the last significant main road build was Marston Ferry Rd, opened in 1971 and there has been almost no attempt at road-widening. The result is that a fairly simple street classification is possible: woonerf/mews, side-streets, main roads, and strategic highways. The first three of these are for providing access to and from homes and destinations, the last also serves to enable through trips.
The division between street types can be seen as a relationship between traffic volumes (and the structure of the road network) and local features, such as street widths and the presence or absence of footways, formal crossings, cycle infrastructure, traffic calming, and grade separation. Mismatches between these result in problems, and solving those requires a decision as to which category a street falls into. more
One of the biggest problems with cycling infrastructure in Oxford is that it is riddled with what I call "dual provision", where two bad options are offered to people cycling instead of one good one. This usually means a choice between cycling on the carriageway (and "pretending to be a car") or cycling on the footway (and "pretending to be a pedestrian") and the absence of any space actually allocated to and designed for cycling. This is bad for people cycling, but also creates conflicts with people walking and driving.
This kind of "dual provision" can occur along main roads, at junctions, and at crossings. It is quite ubiquitous in Oxford, but I look at just three examples: Woodstock Rd, Frideswide Square, and the Barton Park crossing of the A40.
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It is 39 metres across the Barton Park junction cycling from Barton Park to Northway, and 46 metres going the other way, measuring the distance from the stop line to the edge of the far-side A40 traffic lane. Analysis of the signal timings reveals that the time allocated for crossing this - the "intergreen" between the green light for buses and cycles ending and the green light for motor traffic on the A40 starting - is the same in both directions, just 8 seconds.
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The speed limit on Oxford's ring-road should be reduced to 30mph where there are significant at-grade crossings (such as at Barton Park, Kiln Lane) and reduced to 40mph where it passes housing (past Rose Hill, Littlemore, Wood Farm, etc.). This would help with road danger, community severance and barriers to walking and cycling, and with noise pollution, but also with air pollution, vehicle collisions, and carbon emissions. more
