There seems to be some movement in the County Council’s Transform Oxford proposals on buses. More details can be found on their website but I have copied and pasted an extract below. David and I attended a meeting at County Hall last week and asked some questions about bus services for East Oxford residents that seemed to provoke some irritated comments, and it seemed to me that the public transport proposals for East Oxford are causing considerable concern and re-consideration. I wonder if there is scope in this text for bus routes to operate into Oxford City Centre from East Oxford? See what you think!

So far, we believe that there are three options for achieving a reduction in bus flow in High Street and St Aldate’s:
1.
Re-route certain services that do not necessarily need to use the High Street and St Aldate’s to other routes – for example Abingdon Road or Marston Ferry Road and Banbury Road. Because of the detours involved, this approach may only be appropriate for a limited number of services but will still help us achieve a reduction in bus flows.

2.
Use larger vehicles to serve the routes that feed into the High Street, but reduce the service frequencies – i.e. carry the same number of passengers on fewer, larger vehicles. This could mean significantly fewer vehicles not only in the city centre but throughout the routes into the city from the east.

3.
Use “normal” size buses to serve the routes that feed into the High Street but terminate those buses to the east of the High Street. There are two points where routes converge – at The Plain and at London Place. There appears to be scope at both locations to create an appropriately landscaped terminus. Travel onwards into the city centre would then be by a very high capacity, high frequency (leaving at least every five minutes) transfer bus (some vehicles are available that take almost four full “normal” bus loads) or on foot or, possibly, by a hired bike.

Options 2 or 3, probably in conjunction with option 1, could result in at least a 50% reduction in bus flows in High Street and St Aldate’s.
From a passenger’s perspective, option 1 could mean longer journey times. Option 2 means lower service frequencies but no need to interchange; option 3 maintains high frequency services but means an interchange. Making the options work well for passengers is clearly vital and that will be the focus of our work.

We will consult stakeholders and the public on these options to try to find the right balance between convenience for bus passengers and local environmental improvements.
Because of the huge amount of work involved, we are not expecting to deliver major bus reductions in High Street and St Aldate’s before 2011.