Solution to parking problems? (From Oxford Mail)

Sounds like a good plan, although with the current parking, I'd rather they parked on the grass verges than on the main road.

So long as the locals don't get their driveways blocked in, then it's not THAT bad, as the cars are no doubt all gone by early evening.

Well, it's hardly surprising that there's a parking issue at Hanborough Station!

If you look at the use of the 242 bus service from Witney, the last train from Paddington you could use would be the 1722 - and you'd then have to wait 30 min for the 1900 bus! So it's hardly surprising that, with such a non-integrated bus service, people prefer to use their cars.

The alternative is to drive all the way to Didcot, which has a decent-sized station car park.

As for other stations between Shipton and Oxford, Shipton has only 20 car park spaces, Ascott under Wychwood has none, neither does Finstock. Charlbury has 158 but Combe has none - and Hanborough has a mere 48.

If the greenies want to keep us off the roads, sort out the bus service and develop an integrated bus/train timetable from Witney to Paddington!

Better still, bring back the Witney Flyer!!

nickwilcock wrote:
Well, it's hardly surprising that there's a parking issue at Hanborough Station! If you look at the use of the 242 bus service from Witney, the last train from Paddington you could use would be the 1722 - and you'd then have to wait 30 min for the 1900 bus! So it's hardly surprising that, with such a non-integrated bus service, people prefer to use their cars. The alternative is to drive all the way to Didcot, which has a decent-sized station car park. As for other stations between Shipton and Oxford, Shipton has only 20 car park spaces, Ascott under Wychwood has none, neither does Finstock. Charlbury has 158 but Combe has none - and Hanborough has a mere 48. If the greenies want to keep us off the roads, sort out the bus service and develop an integrated bus/train timetable from Witney to Paddington! Better still, bring back the Witney Flyer!!

Out of curiosity, how does a train station with no parking work? Isn't the Finstock one in the middle of no where too, so hardly walking distance??

I think driving to a station and taking a train DOES consitute as using public transport, and is at least a good step in the right direction.

The train company gets customers it should buy the hewdon site and make it a car park.

Please no more new houses or new developments with building new roads and turning the A40 into a dual carriage way to Cheltenham and the A34 a motorway. The A4095 at Long Hanborough is awful in the rush hour (s)

The total number of passengers using Hanborough station increased almost 50% in the three years 2006–09. The redoubling of parts of the Cotswold Line will allow a more frequent train service, which will attract even more passengers. People need to be able to get to Hanborough station without struggling for a parking space.
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A car makes its worst emissions in the first few miles of each journey, before its catalytic converter has warmed up. Therefore a short-distance car journey is bad for the environment even if it is to a railway station (or, for that matter, a park & ride bus). And peak hour road traffic on the A4095 is unhealthy and unsafe for villagers in Bladon and Long Hanborough and needs to be reduced.
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A larger car park therefore is not a long-term solution, and especially if it would take a green field site. I agree with bodchris that if Hanborough is to have a larger car park, it should be on the Hewden "brownfield" site. But traffic at Hanborough has increased by more than 100 passengers per day in just three years. Don't expect doubling the car park from 50 to 100 spaces to solve overcrowding!
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nickwilcock makes two good points. Firstly Stagecoach bus 242 runs only hourly and is not perfectly integrated with Cotswold Line train times. Secondly if the Witney Railway were still open it would save a lot of passengers the need to drive to Hanborough at all.
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Witney and Carterton are now at least twice the population they were when the railway closed in 1962. In 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies' "Connecting Communities" report established that if the Witney Railway were still open it would be commercially viable.
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Operating income would not cover the capital cost of rebuiding the railway, which Mott Macdonald estimated several years ago at about £100 million. But local rail schemes like this would be a modest cost compared with the £17 billion of our money the Government wants to spend just to take a few minutes off train journeys between London and Birmingham.
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And what has congestion on the A40 and A44 cost our economy over the years? A better bus service to Hanborough station would be a start, but in the longer term we need the Oxford – Witney – Carterton railway rebuilt.

The proposed solution is only adding problems! It's an appalling plan which is not only short sighted, but also it does not seem to consider any of the additional, non-monetary costs of the proposals:

1) As mentioned in previous comments, building a car park for 100 cars is far from a long-term solution; it will very soon be full with more people from Oxford taking advantage of free parking here. At this rate Hanborough station will become another Park & Ride for Oxford. Is this something that the residents from Hanborough want?

2) More affordable housing will not only add further congestion to the already build-up of traffic on the A4095 during morning and evening rush hours, it will also add further strain to the drainage and sewage system of the area, which is already struggling to cope with current conditions. Do we want untreated water flowing on the streets more frequently?

3) if facilities have to found for a car park, then why destroy another green field, especially when there is an available brownsite (the Hewden site) that is already developed and on the same side of the station? This would be a more environmentally friendly option, and cheaper (and would not need the excuse of more housing to make the project of building a car park financially viable).

Ah so we get to the real point of your post. NO HOUSES FOR POOR PEOPLE IN HANDBOROUGH. Very noble, have you started a petition?

Hugh Jaeger wrote:
The total number of passengers using Hanborough station increased almost 50% in the three years 2006–09. The redoubling of parts of the Cotswold Line will allow a more frequent train service, which will attract even more passengers. People need to be able to get to Hanborough station without struggling for a parking space.
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A car makes its worst emissions in the first few miles of each journey, before its catalytic converter has warmed up. Therefore a short-distance car journey is bad for the environment even if it is to a railway station (or, for that matter, a park & ride bus). And peak hour road traffic on the A4095 is unhealthy and unsafe for villagers in Bladon and Long Hanborough and needs to be reduced.
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A larger car park therefore is not a long-term solution, and especially if it would take a green field site. I agree with bodchris that if Hanborough is to have a larger car park, it should be on the Hewden "brownfield" site. But traffic at Hanborough has increased by more than 100 passengers per day in just three years. Don't expect doubling the car park from 50 to 100 spaces to solve overcrowding!
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nickwilcock makes two good points. Firstly Stagecoach bus 242 runs only hourly and is not perfectly integrated with Cotswold Line train times. Secondly if the Witney Railway were still open it would save a lot of passengers the need to drive to Hanborough at all.
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Witney and Carterton are now at least twice the population they were when the railway closed in 1962. In 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies' "Connecting Communities" report established that if the Witney Railway were still open it would be commercially viable.
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Operating income would not cover the capital cost of rebuiding the railway, which Mott Macdonald estimated several years ago at about £100 million. But local rail schemes like this would be a modest cost compared with the £17 billion of our money the Government wants to spend just to take a few minutes off train journeys between London and Birmingham.
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And what has congestion on the A40 and A44 cost our economy over the years? A better bus service to Hanborough station would be a start, but in the longer term we need the Oxford – Witney – Carterton railway rebuilt.

Hugh, the integrated bus service is pie in the sky, to get passengers to the morning trains it would need to leave the first village at least an hour before the train departs, in order to serve all villages on the way (one passenger per village maybe), there is no way that you would sit on a bus for longer than the journey into London. Secondly unless they move the Station, the 4095 (which is an Arterial route anyway) will be the only option (and well done OCC for making it more dangerous with your "road improvements") for people to access the station. And lastly, it is the Greenie/public transport lobby that has stopped the improvements to the 44 and 40 that would have eased the congestion that you talk about. The Tin Hat, the dualling to Witney, and the link onto the 34 would have solved most of the bottlenecks. But one simple thing that would SAVE money and stop the queue from Wolvecote to Witney Road, Eynsham would be to turn the traffic lights at the junction OFF.

Up to 400 people per day commute by train from Hanborough to Oxford, Reading or London. Clearly Hanborough needs more local employment to reduce the need to commute 50 miles away to work.
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More housing would bring in more residents into the village and increase the number of people who need to commute out again. Limiting housing growth is about nothing except keeping the community sustainable.
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A smaller village might need a few more people moving in if it helped to keep the primary school, post office and last remaining pub open and the community viable. But Hanborough sustains six pubs, six or seven shops and has more than enough children to keep the school full.
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Neither First Great Western, Cottsway or the local councillors who are backing them has mentioned how many homes may be involved or even how many acres the site is. This has nothing to do with solving a transport problem. It is a shallow excuse to cash in on a piece of land by building houses.
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Putting housing in unsustainable locations and making room for more cars are unworkable ideas that made a mess of so many places from the 1920s to the 1970s. It would be simpler and more viable to make the 242 bus connect with the train.
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A bus from Woodstock misses the 0642 train to Paddington by one minute. There is no bus from either direction for anyone wanting to catch the 0734 to Paddington. A bus from Witney misses it by three minutes. A bus from Woodstock misses the 0801 train to Reading by five minutes.
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Anyone on the 1722 from Paddington has a half-hour wait at Hanborough if they want a bus westwards. Anyone on the 1822 reaches Hanborough more than half an hour after the last bus in either direction has gone.
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FGW should contribute to the cost of giving Hanborough a better bus service rather than collude with a house-builder for short-term gain.

Bus 242 reaches most of the population in Hanborough station's catchment area. It takes 15 minutes from Witney to Hanborough, 10 or 15 minutes from Woodstock to Hanborough. On the way it takes in Bladon, New Yatt, North Leigh, the whole of Long Hanborough and one end of Freeland. Some trips go through all of Freeland village. Peter's claim that a bus to the train would take an hour is pessimistic and baseless.
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Too few of the 242's peak hour journeys are timed to meet the trains. Running the bus about 10 minutes earlier would add several peak hour connections. Far fewer passengers would then need to drive to Hanborough station. This would free enough parking spaces for passengers to drive from Church Hanborough, Combe, East End and Stonesfield without having to park on the verge.
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Enlarging the A40 or A44 and building a new link road around at Wolvercote and Pear Tree would waste many £millions but leave drivers no better off. Traffic volumes cannot be managed: road traffic expands to fill whatever road space you provide for it. Bigger roads just encourage more cars and lorries and create bigger congestion problems.
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By contrast, reopening the railway through Yarnton and Eynsham to Witney would allow faster travel to Oxford and the rest of the country for much less fuel per passenger. If there isn't enough capital to reopen it as a heavy railway for trains to Reading and Paddington, it could reopen as a diesel "tram-train" like they have in Germany. This could serve Witney town centre and Oxford city centre, run on the main railway between Oxford and Yarnton and would avoid the cost of installing overhead electrification.
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The tram could be extended on a new route to Carterton and into the town centre there. This would allow even more travellers to leave their cars at home.
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An Oxford – Witney tramway, perhaps extending to Carterton, would cost not much more than the £88 million that Oxon CC wanted for its Access to Oxford scheme, most of which would have been spent on roads. The tramway would reduce congestion which would speed up the S1 and S2 buses, giving people a real choice of buses for economy or trams for speed.
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Anyone who still chose to drive would also get a quicker journey at lower fuel cost. Investing in public transport is not anti-car. It's pro-choice, and by reducing traffic it can make motoring a lot more pleasant.

Lord Peter Macvey wrote:
Ah so we get to the real point of your post. NO HOUSES FOR POOR PEOPLE IN HANDBOROUGH. Very noble, have you started a petition?

The suggestion that this is about not building houses for the poor people in Hanborough is not well informed. The plans to build houses next to the train station originated as a potential way to fund the additional car park; it was not triggered by further affordable housing needs. There are already other ongoing developments in the village that have been addressing any further housing need.

If parking facilities are needed, the £800K cost of the brownsite, as quoted by the paper, could be mainly paid off in few years by charging users of the car park, without the need of any further housing development. There is no real need to ruin another beautiful spot of land of the Oxfordshire countryside!

Hugh Jaeger wrote:
Up to 400 people per day commute by train from Hanborough to Oxford, Reading or London. Clearly Hanborough needs more local employment to reduce the need to commute 50 miles away to work.
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More housing would bring in more residents into the village and increase the number of people who need to commute out again. Limiting housing growth is about nothing except keeping the community sustainable.
`
A smaller village might need a few more people moving in if it helped to keep the primary school, post office and last remaining pub open and the community viable. But Hanborough sustains six pubs, six or seven shops and has more than enough children to keep the school full.
`
Neither First Great Western, Cottsway or the local councillors who are backing them has mentioned how many homes may be involved or even how many acres the site is. This has nothing to do with solving a transport problem. It is a shallow excuse to cash in on a piece of land by building houses.
`
Putting housing in unsustainable locations and making room for more cars are unworkable ideas that made a mess of so many places from the 1920s to the 1970s. It would be simpler and more viable to make the 242 bus connect with the train.
`
A bus from Woodstock misses the 0642 train to Paddington by one minute. There is no bus from either direction for anyone wanting to catch the 0734 to Paddington. A bus from Witney misses it by three minutes. A bus from Woodstock misses the 0801 train to Reading by five minutes.
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Anyone on the 1722 from Paddington has a half-hour wait at Hanborough if they want a bus westwards. Anyone on the 1822 reaches Hanborough more than half an hour after the last bus in either direction has gone.
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FGW should contribute to the cost of giving Hanborough a better bus service rather than collude with a house-builder for short-term gain.

Hugh, FGW has just put up the amount it charges Taxis to use the rank at Oxford and its other main stations from roughly £260 per year to £1,000 per year for a Cab and drivers. ( and look at the chaos trying to get a cab at busy times with people pushing in etc) That just shows that they care only about money and not providing a service, so you have no hope at all of getting them to stump up a penny.

I still think they should re-open a Witney-Oxford train line! Would cost a ridiculous amount, but would be a fantastic solution to traffic and congestion problems!

The Carterton-Witney-Eyn
sham-Oxford route would certainly support a well used rail service, but the cost of rebuilding and diverting around roads and other developments which have blocked the original route would be phenomenal. A guided busway, as they have just opened in Cambridge would be more likely. The buses could use the old rail route and divert into towns and village centres, running into Oxford city centre using the Woodstock Rd bus lane.

Tram trains are fine where there is adequate city centre road space - not the case in Oxford. A tunnel would be the answer, but that wouldnt be suitable for diesel trams.

Patrick in Devon wrote:
The Carterton-Witney-Eyn
sham-Oxford route would certainly support a well used rail service, but the cost of rebuilding and diverting around roads and other developments which have blocked the original route would be phenomenal. A guided busway, as they have just opened in Cambridge would be more likely. The buses could use the old rail route and divert into towns and village centres, running into Oxford city centre using the Woodstock Rd bus lane.

Tram trains are fine where there is adequate city centre road space - not the case in Oxford. A tunnel would be the answer, but that wouldnt be suitable for diesel trams.

Why not just spend money improving the road network, instead of wasting it on wooly road schemes that cause congestion, we have only a handful of people commuting from each small village and they need to drive into work, so if we improve that then we wouldn't have clogged up contrived jams everywhere, Botley Rd and Abingdon Rd are just two examples.

Spending all the money on roads is like trying to fill a bottom-less pit. Half the people who work in Oxford live outside the city, and the rail station is too far from major employment centres such as the science area, the JR and Cowley.

A much improved modern integrated public transport network is needed.

In June 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies estimated the cost of rebuilding the Witney Railway at £95 million. For nine miles of heavy railway that's not bad, and a tram-train line would be significantly cheaper than that.
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Only short stretches of the trackbed are now used for other purposes. Eynsham's southern relief road and Station Road trading estate are no problem to a tram-train - its track would just run along the road. The Witney by-pass cuts across the former trackbed and Station Lane trading estate occupies part of it, but a tram-train would not need this section as its track would enter Witney along the road.
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Rights of way for trams are narrower than for buses. Buses can't be much less than 2.5 metres wide, and the longer they are the more road width they need to take bends and corners. Tram tracks ensure exactly where the vehicle goes, articulated sections minimise the extent to which the body overhangs when turning, and extra-narrow tram bodies can be built for narrow streets. This makes trams more suitable than buses for the medieval street plan of central Oxford.
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Mott MacDonald's report a few years ago on options to improve public transport between Oxford and Witney found hardly any difference in price between building a tramway and building a guided busway. A train or tram is far more energy-efficient whether the bus is guided or not, and trams last longer than modern buses so they are better value over the lifetime of the investment.
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Is a guided busway any more energy-efficient than an ordinary bus lane or bus-only road? I see no-one benefitting from a guided busway apart from the company that makes thousands of tonnes of pre-cast concrete bus track and the contractors who lay it.

The problem with the tram-train idea as regards Oxford is that the city centre simply cannot take tram lines. There isnt the road space, and the cost and disruption would be prohibitive. There are several similar sized cities in Europe with similar constraints that are building tunnels for light rail - Brescia in Italy and Linz in Austria for example.

Tunnels cannot use diesel trams. Hybrids are too expensive, so electric traction is required. Tunnels and segregated routes can be used for automatic systems, such as the Docklands LR, which is by far the most efficient and safest form of transport.

Such a system could be provided in Oxford using the existing rail corridoors and a tunnel to the east, but it would be concentrated in the core urban area and extensions to places like Witney would be unlikely.

I agree that guided busways are not the answer in general, but they could form part of an integrated system. They opted for that in Cambridge because the buses can switch to ordinary roads, which makes them a very flexible form of transport.

In the meantime, if nothing is done apart from tinkering with road junctions and shuffling bus routes, congestion will worsen and the economy of what should be a leading city region will fail to develop.

In the meantime, if nothing is done apart from tinkering with road junctions and shuffling bus routes, congestion will worsen and the economy of what should be a leading city region will fail to develop. Say Paddy.
Not so in Oxford, the Jams are contrived. You will queue all the way from Redbridge into Oxford centre, but not quite, because once you get past the badly timed lights at Folly Bridge the road is clear, the same with Botley Rd, and Park End St. If these were real Jams then they would extend to their destination, not to an easily overcome contrived pinch point, do you not think it strange that when the lights in Park End St fail, the traffic flows freely?

In the meantime, if nothing is done apart from tinkering with road junctions and shuffling bus routes, congestion will worsen and the economy of what should be a leading city region will fail to develop. Say Paddy.
Not so in Oxford, the Jams are contrived. You will queue all the way from Redbridge into Oxford centre, but not quite, because once you get past the badly timed lights at Folly Bridge the road is clear, the same with Botley Rd, and Park End St. If these were real Jams then they would extend to their destination, not to an easily overcome contrived pinch point, do you not think it strange that when the lights in Park End St fail, the traffic flows freely?