Traders and the leader of Oxford City Council have spoken out about the “nightmare” traffic caused by emergency maintenance work at a major city roundabout.

City council leader Susan Brown publicly posted her frustrations at Thames Water works being carried out at The Plain in Oxford on Thursday night.

She called out the county council cabinet member for highways management, Andrew Gant, Thames Water and the county council itself.

She said: “Please can we have some actual traffic management during the works at The Plain?

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“Can you at least prioritise buses? Traffic jams visible in all directions even at this time of night.”

Traders have also been affected by the works.

Oxford Mail: Councillor Susan Brown Councillor Susan Brown (Image: Oxford City Council)Maddie Watson, who works behind the bar at The Cape of Good Hope on Cowley Road, said: “Yes it was a nightmare, but traffic is always bad down here anyway.”

Other businesses on Cowley Road told the Oxford Mail that traffic has become a problem in the area over the past few months.

Kean, the manager of Malaysian Chinese dim sum cafe, Rachel’s, on St Clements Street, said: “Traffic has been bad here since the LTNs were installed.”

The owner of Nu-Hair on Cowley Road, Jodie Mills, agreed that traffic is an issue, and raised the issue of bus scheduling.

She said: “It’s just normal now. I get the bus home from St Clements and it’s always backed up both ways.

“It’s normally really bad going into Oxford, and recently, because buses are so far behind schedule, by time they’ve gone into Oxford they seem to be out of service when they come back out towards Headington.

“You can see them all queued and there’s loads stuck there. They just can’t get here on time. They’re running 20 to 30 minutes late.

“The traffic has become much worse in the last few months. In the summer holidays it was a bit better, but since around October it’s been awful.”

Oxford Mail: Traffic on The Plain Traffic on The Plain (Image: Contributed)

Responding to the comments, a Thames Water spokesman said: “We’re sorry to motorists who experienced delays while we carried out emergency repair work to a damaged fire hydrant and valve lid in the carriageway on The Plain in Oxford.

“Our engineers attended on Thursday night and finished the job at 7am on Friday morning, removing temporary lights.

“We’d like to thank residents for their patience during this time.”

The county council said it is aware of the issues following the emergency work.

A spokesman said: “The work is now complete, multi-way signals have been removed, and we will feed the issues back to Thames Water.”

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This story was written by Matthew Norman, he joined the team in 2022 as a Facebook community reporter.

Matthew covers Bicester and focuses on finding stories from diverse communities.

Get in touch with him by emailing: Matthew.norman@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @OxMailMattN1