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The pointless £51m car park that symbolises Oxford’s war on motorists

The commuter belt scheme was meant to help ease heavy congestion in the city – but it can’t be used because there’s no way in

For a car park outside one of England’s most congested cities, Eynsham park and ride is a remarkably peaceful place. Bright, freshly painted white lines lie unmolested on the virgin tarmac.
Between and around the bays, there are well-maintained flower beds of purple verbena and bright yellow rudbeckia, as well as hundreds of saplings in protective sleeves. A stern metal fence runs around the perimeter, while the only sign of a human life is a security guard, perhaps the most bored man in Oxfordshire, who sits waiting to shoo away anyone who threatens to disturb the tranquillity. 
No, Eynsham park and ride is no place for motor vehicles. Or at least it will not be for a few years. Although the car park was finished earlier this year, with 850 spaces and at a cost of £51m, it has yet to be connected to the A40 that roars alongside it. At the earliest estimate, the Park & Ride will not be operational until 2027. 
While the white elephant car park might lie quiet, it has caused quite a ruckus. It is the latest flashpoint in the ongoing battle over cars in Oxford, which has been one the country’s most fraught.
“It’s completely crazy,” says Edmund King, president of the AA. “It’s even got electric charging bays, cycle parking, everything you need for integrated transport apart from the road to connect it. It beggars belief, what could they use it for? A film set, a skateboard park? 
“Could they let learners in there learn how to park? These things need to be joined up. The problem is they’ve invested the money and now if they have to wait two years to get the road access, it still needs to be maintained or else it will become totally overgrown. It’s a waste of resources either way. It’s a shame that the planning here has been totally bungled and it’s going to lie derelict.”
Locals are also enraged. “The general consensus is that [the car park] is a huge waste of money,” says Sarah*, the owner of Evenlode DIY, a local shop in Eynsham which sells household and gardening goods. “[The money required to maintain it for three years] is a complete waste; you’d much rather they were spending that money on things that are actually needed at the moment.”
The council believes that the new park and ride could cut up to a third of the peak traffic in each direction between Witney and Oxford, providing “regular and reliable public transport services” into the latter. About 32,000 vehicles use this stretch of the A40 every day. Funding for the car park and associated roadworks was approved in December 2021 and work began the following year, but cost pressures caused the part-cancellation of improvements to the A40, of which the access road was part. 
A spokesperson for Oxfordshire county council said: “The council decided to go ahead with the Eynsham park and ride scheme which was funded by a ring-fenced and non-indexed grant award and had obtained all the relevant consents and approvals to allow it to proceed to construction. Any delays to the park and ride construction would have caused inflationary pressures to impact its affordability. Going ahead with construction of the park and ride site has saved millions of pounds in inflation and construction costs. This was a conscious decision, taken at a time when costs were rising rapidly across all industries.”
Changes to the A40 improvement scheme were submitted last September and now need to be approved by Homes England and the Department for Transport, which is funding the works and park and ride. The lengthy bureaucratic processes involved mean the car park is unlikely to be connected to the trunk road for a few years yet. 
“I think it was perfectly reasonable they built it when they did with the money they had,” says Zuhura Plummer, campaign director for Oxfordshire Liveable Streets. “They would have had quotes from before inflation started to go crazy, so you want to get it built when your quotes are going to be less. But obviously it’s frustrating that they didn’t finish the access road.”
In recent decades, as Oxfordshire has boomed, traffic in and around Oxford has steadily worsened. In 2022, local authorities announced a trial of Britain’s first zero emissions zone in the city centre.
But between LTNs (low traffic neighbourhoods), bus gates, traffic filters, pedestrianisation of central Oxford and expensive charging (£7.80 per hour for an electric car, The Telegraph can confirm), some of the methods designed to discourage car use amid the dreaming spires have proved controversial. In March, there was another row over a plan to charge larger vehicles, including SUVs, more for parking. 
Major roadworks, which have coincided with the new restrictions, have only made things worse. In July, Network Rail announced that there would be yet another delay to the Botley Road bridge replacement, which means the key arterial road in west Oxford will not reopen in October as planned. 
In Oxford city centre, most people agree that something needs to be done about congestion. “I’ve never known anywhere as bad as this for traffic, even Chester,” says Jack Siviour, an 84-year-old retiree, who has lived in the city for two years. He takes the bus, but says the traffic can make even short journeys tricky. “I have to go to Wheatley, which is only about five miles away but easily takes an hour to get to because of traffic.”
Caroline Gray, 57, a primary school teaching assistant who has lived in Oxford for 35 years, says the traffic has become much worse since she arrived in the area. “It never used to be a problem at all,” she says. “You could drive down and park in the centre of town. It’s definitely changed, especially in the past few years.” 
Last year there was particular agitation around the city’s new LTN’s, which were made permanent in October 2023 after a trial. Anti-LTN protests drew thousands of attendees. A bollard on Howard Street, installed as part of the scheme, was repeatedly run over, beaten, burnt and bent, before eventually being stolen. 
Critics say that the anti-car schemes are being driven by ideology, rather than listening to the practical concerns of residents. 
“It’s sickening,” says Ian Snowdon, a Conservative councillor. “It’s an abuse of the car driver.” He is particularly frustrated with the low emissions zone, where drivers must pay £10 to enter the city centre. 
“The zero emissions zone is the most anti-socialist thing you can imagine, being brought in by a group of champagne socialists,” Snowdon adds. “They’re going to make all the low-income shop assistants, unpaid carers and school assistants who live in east Oxford go out to the ring-road and sit in traffic. But if you’re a lawyer or chief executive of one of the colleges and live in north Oxford, and you need to drop your kids off at Magdalen College School, you’ll have a private road to drive through. Paying £10 to save an hour sitting in traffic is a no-brainer if you’re a solicitor or accountant charging £400 per hour.
“I want this to be an honest debate based on data and consultation,” he says. “It doesn’t seem to be going that way at the moment. It seems to be more about ideology rather than facts.” 
Others, however, argue that the schemes to slash traffic don’t go anywhere near far enough. “I think there should be no private cars in the centre of Oxford whatsoever,” says Chris Ward, 76, a volunteer at OxUnboxed, a non-profit refill shop.
“The time has come for private cars to be replaced by public transport. There’s a whole stratum of opinion in Oxford that would say the same. I think you might allow taxis through and buses, and delivery vans.
“Primarily it’s on environmental grounds, on grounds of pollution and sustainability,” he adds. “Even electric cars are a drain on carbon consumption, so they should be reduced. People just shouldn’t be driving through towns, however rich they are.
“I understand that there are people who are inconvenienced and worried by LTNs. But if they were rebranded for what they really are, which is ‘less asthma for children zones’, ‘less pollution for old people with bronchitis zones’, or ‘nice places to live zones’, then a lot more people would support them. Low traffic neighbourhood sounds like a police state to some people and they get very agitated.” 
One man who has already felt the effects of the new regulations is Clinton Pugh, a former restaurateur who was one of the most outspoken critics of the LTNs. (He is also the father of the Oscar-nominated actress, Florence Pugh, whose views on LTNs are not known.) After LTNs were introduced on the Cowley Road in east Oxford in 2022, with the loss of hundreds of parking spaces, footfall to his three hospitality businesses – Café CoCo, Kaz Bar and Café Tarifa – plummeted. Pugh protested against what he called “bullies” on the council at the time, but to no avail.
“It has caused absolute havoc,” he says. “It has been disastrous for business, full stop.” A rearguard action to try to save or sell his businesses was not enough; they recently went into receivership.
“Even with the best will in the world, and Florence has been helping me and lent me loads of money last August, I couldn’t sustain it all,” he says. “It has been several months of hell. I’ve wasted so much money trying to keep the thing going, to survive. I’ve been to so many meetings, come up with so many ideas to help the council beat the traffic, but they have ignored me.
“I’ve lost at least £800,000, my pension – everything. I’m extremely upset and annoyed and worried for the future. In Oxford, [the council] has made the situation worse.” 
Wherever you stand on the LTNs, Oxford and the surrounding area will need more traffic solutions in the coming years. Oxfordshire County Council has forecast that the population will grow to 831,000 by 2031, an increase of 15 per cent from now, and has uniquely challenging transport dynamics.
“We’re a very densely populated city and quite a rural county,” says Plummer. “And that has its own challenges. In rural areas, there’s nothing that can really compete with a car in terms of flexibility. But in Oxford, they have a lot of downsides: air pollution, the space they take up, [and that] they exaggerate heat waves and flash flooding.
“The city relies on people who can’t afford to live in it,” she adds. “So people live outside Oxford in Bicester, Wantage: all these places have huge amounts of housing going up. People are going to try to get into Oxford on a daily basis. At the moment it’s pretty miserable for people. 
“The county is doing its absolute best to provide services, but you can’t speed up buses unless you take cars off the road. And habits are hard to change. Just saying to people ‘please would you try getting out of your car’ won’t work. But if you put in some restrictions, people are more likely to do it.” 
The Oxford traffic wars may just be getting started. As the city grapples with its popularity, the council seems likely to suggest more restrictions on motorists, regardless of how much they irk the residents. The outskirts will need more park and rides, too. Perhaps even some that are joined up to the main road.
*Name changed to protect anonymity 

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