Thanks to Headington News for this photo from Monday pm
The Highways team has been out to pump water away in the centre of Headington, and officers are doing a great job.
In view of the persistent flooding during bad weather, David and I are asking for an investigation by the County Council into whether the drainage is adequate – best to get any problems identified now before the new phase of London Road works is planned and scheduled!
As you will recall, SSEB recently laid cables along the London Road and the bus stop outside Dorset House was taken out of action. We have been trying to find out how the communications process can be improved when this happens.
The utilities company should liaise with the County Network Supervisor over all works affecting the highway, and where this work might affect a bus stop, the Bus Team at the County also needs to know. They ensure that the bus operators inform users of the alternative stop and place the information in the shelter with the assistance of the bus team.
The county puts details of roadworks on their Streetworks Register. The bus companies can pick up the information from there and can access privately operated webpages (although the latter don’t include works to pavements, only to highways)
In this case there was a communications breakdown at several points in the chain, and we are working with county officers to improve communications with residents and with local councillors in future
Turkish hazel tree
The tree felling that has taken place at the Dorset House site was principally the removal of the diseased and decaying horse chestnut trees along the London Road frontage; this work was approved by the Council as part of the landscape proposals. These details include replacement of these trees with specimen Turkish hazels (this is a quite large tree species, not like our native small tree). The three chestnuts were showing increasing signs of ill health and weakness over the past few years and a large limb fell from one of them into the road in the summer; and although remedial tree surgery work was carried out at that time, we’re glad they were taken down before this recent period of high winds. Development of the site has provided a timely opportunity to secure another element of new tree planting for the next generation of tree cover along this important arterial route into the city (to go along with other recent landscape improvements, i.e. replacement of the root-diseased beech trees that have been disappearing over many years now from the front of the Headington Prep school, with hornbeams; and entirely new plantings of lime trees along the frontage of the main Headington school site, which will hopefully produce an attractive avenue).
We are advised that the trench outside Dorset House on the London Road (opposite Sandfield Road) will be filled in and tarmacked over on Wednesday 7 December. It is possible that the bus stop will be back in use by tomorrow late afternoon/evening but it will certainly be back in operation by Thursday morning at the latest
We are still communicating with bus companies, county officers and utilities companies to find more effective ways of communicating planned works and their implications to residents and local councillors. This is trickier than one might think!
Photo by Paul Anderson
The bus stop outside Dorset House has been temporarily closed due to the work on neighbouring pavements. This is the stop that people use to catch the bus into Oxford, and is also the stop at which local residents alight after shopping in Headington. This is causing a great deal of inconvenience to local residents, particularly those with mobility problems.
Oxford Bus says that someone was sent out yesterday to investigate the possibility of putting in a temporary stop but could find nowhere suitable that didn’t interfere with traffic lights or provide adequate safety for passengers
Stagecoach confirms that the location of temporary bus stops is the responsibility of the local council. Oxford City Council informs us that this is the responsibility of the County Council, and there is no out of hours number for the County Council’s Public Transport Dept. on a Saturday.
We have contacted the Construction Director of Berkeley Homes and he is investigating. It appears that the fencing was put in place by SSEB and we’ve left a message for the appropriate County Officer. The SSEB depot in Oxford is shut over the weekend but we are informed that the works will be completed next week -possibly Wednesday 7th. but this is yet to be confirmed.
What we don’t understand is why neighbouring residents and ward councillors were not informed in advance
Dorset House is at the junction of London Road and Latimer Road. The bus stop on the Sandfield Road side of London Road is fully operational
You will remember that we have been calling for the County Council to make the junction of Osler Road and London Road safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Following comments made by residents at a ward focus meeting, our colleague and county councillor Altaf Khan asked the county officer to conduct a further inspection.
County officers have responded that they want to highlight this risk without encouraging people to cross there. They believe that the most practical way of achieving this is to apply white direction arrows on the road surface to emphasise the fact that there is two-way traffic beyond the bus lane. These are commonly used symbols that people are familiar with and, although primarily there to guide drivers, they feel that the meaning should be clear to pedestrians too.
We are continuing to press for eye level signs to alert pedestrians to the need to look right when crossing from the central platform, but we welcome the implementation of the directional arrows to see if they work. We’d welcome your comments on this!
Congratulations to Business Headington and partners for winning a bronze award in the Best Small Commercial Display section of Oxford in Bloom.
This is a great achievement, and we’re grateful to those who have contributed and also to Headington Action for being prepared to underwrite any shortfall of funding (not required in the end!) Many Headington residents have told David and me how much they enjoy the wonderful hanging basket displays. Thanks everyone!
Following questions at the Osler Road residents’ meeting with various agencies including County, a senior officer has checked to see if taxis trigger bus lights – at the bus gate, it is only the general traffic lane that is signalised. (Sorry, his word not ours!)
Buses trigger a red light for traffic, but taxis do not. There is a give-way marking at the end of the bus lane, so that taxis, cycles and anything else that does not trigger the red light for traffic can get out of the bus lane, giving way to any traffic in the general traffic lane.
The County Council will be undertaking road gulley and drainage channel cleaning on the London Road in the early hours of Friday morning this week probably starting at 4.00am.
The team will undertake the work without flashing beacons in order to minimise the disruption to residents
As many of you will know, there is always an issue about Christmas lights in Headington at this time of year, and this is often debated at Area Committee
Following a meeting held yesterday, Headington Action will act as the umbrella group for dealing with the finances for this and supporting/developing the way forward.
The group agreed that for this year there would be a small scale Christmas event focussing on the Christmas tree and lights and possibly carol singing/band. It was felt that putting lights up on the street lamps would not be possible this year as funding needed to be sought etc.
The issue of people gathering if there was a switch on of the lights and the need for any road closure was discussed and it was agreed that this would not be possible this year. If there was a switch on of the tree lights, this would need to coincide with a late night shopping night (Thurs) and any carol singers, bands would need to be at various locations outside shops (Co-op, Waitrose etc) to avoid any crowd build up in one place.
We are grateful to Jill Cummings and all those involved in resolving these issues including Patrick and Richard from Headington Action, and Neil and Elaine and Paul for Headington businesses.