East Oxford LTN ANPR consultation closes 5pm today

[Danny Yee]

https://letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/east-oxford-ltns-2023/survey_tools/east-oxford-ltns-2023_survey
Please support the LTNs but oppose taxi exemptions.

These are some of the points I've made:

1) While increasing cycling rates is a key goal of LTNs, it's not the only one. There are also gains for people walking and wheeling: since the solid bollards went in in East Oxford, I regularly see wheelchairs and mobility scooters using the middle of the carriageway, and people walking there so they can walk side by side or pass people going the other way. Other key gains include reduced noise pollution and general liveability, with the broad idea being that the streets now belong to people and motor vehicles are guests (the Dutch actually have this on entry signs: "auto te gast"). This in turn contributes to social and community health: https://wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2023/05/mental-social-and-community-health-gains-from-traffic-reduction/ A lot of this is more sensitive to traffic volumes than cycling is. If we think of the streets as being "single shared surfaces" - as some of them effectively are now - then Transport for London guidance for that to work is that "below flows of 90 vehicles per hour".

 2) LTN 1/20 says mixed traffic at 20mph is adequate provision for "most people". But we want to do better than that - we want _everyone_ who can cycle to feel comfortable doing so in the streets around them. At the moment the East Oxford LTNs are pretty close to making cycling universally accessible - there are people cycling with three and four year olds, and unaccompanied nine year olds cycling.  Doubling or tripling traffic volumes on key segments would lose some of those gains.

 3) On gradients, LTN 1/20 say this: "At speeds less than 7mph the deviation to maintain balance on two wheels can increase by up to 0.8m. It is not uncommon for cyclists to travel this slowly on steeper uphill gradients and therefore they will require more space and separation from faster vehicles." No details are given, and Dutch guidance is silent on gradients, but the Oslo Street Design Guide wants separate uphill cycle lanes if AADT >500 and there is more than a 1:20 slope for more than 50 metres. See https://wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2022/11/the-oslo-street-design-manual/ for the key chart (with corrections). Looking at the Ordnance Survey map, Divinity Rd and Crescent Rd have >1:20 slopes for ~400 metres and ~600 metres respectively; they will almost certainly exceed 500 mv/day with taxi exemptions. (While it obviously doesn't carry as much weight as LTN 1/20, we can still use the Oslo guidance, in the same way that lawyers and judges use precedents from other jurisdictions.)