# Pedestrian crossings etc. on Rose Hill and Church Cowley Road

## Short on time? Just read this.

1. The county council has secured a pot of money specifically for safer crossings on Iffley Road/Henley Ave/Rose Hill. It needs to be spent soon and if we act fast we may get a slice of it for new/improved crossings in this neighbourhood.
2. The county council has secured a larger fund, to be spent over the next three years, for general improvements to pedestrian and cycle connectivity around East Oxford. Again, if we act fairly quickly we may be able to persuade them to use some of this fund for crossings in this neighbourhood, including on Church Cowley Road.

I've drafted a [letter to Cllr Charlie Hicks](#Draft-letter-to-Cllr-Charlie-Hicks), with whom I've been discussing these issues. If you agree with it, please tell me so I can let him know it has your support. The more names we have, the stronger our case.

For an explanation of how I arrived at my suggestions, read on. If you have comments/criticism/suggestions, I'm all ears. I've gone ahead and drafted this myself because I've only just found out about the available funds and the short deadlines on them. I'd like to achieve as broad a consensus as possible and I'd rather have had time to canvass opinion before writing these but it seems easier to edit a flawed proposal than to start from a blank canvas. If I'm speaking out of turn on any of this, please let me know.

## Background

We had a conversation in April 2024 between neighbours in Church Cowley Road even-side and Rose Hill odd-side about how difficult it is to cross either road safely. I learned that several people had individually contacted their councillors about it in recent years without the issue really getting any traction and lots of others felt quite strongly about it. I started chipping away at the problem to see if we could persuade the county council that that there was a local consensus, these complaints were more than just individual frustrations, and that we could back up our observations with hard data. Many thanks to those who kindly shared their past correspondence with councillors.

In August, I was able to join a local 'citizen science' traffic monitoring scheme, funded by city councillors Emily Kerr and Katherine Miles, and a county coucillor, Charlie Hicks, out of the small funds each council gives them to spend at their discretion. It involves a traffic counter made by a Dutch/Belgian outfit called Telraam, which counts and categorises traffic by type, using a machine learning image recognition algorithm ([for those with privacy concerns, please read this](https://telraam.net/en/blog/telraam-privacy)). In daylight hours, it can also provide a crude measure of the speed of cars and larger vehicles. You can [browse all the data from my device here](https://telraam.net/en/location/9000007291) and [explore other nearby devices here](https://telraam.net/#12/51.7491/-1.2619). There's a summary of some key findings below.

Charlie Hicks kindly agreed to meet me last week to talk about these data. We discussed lots of different aspects of the local traffic situation and the road infrastructure and I've summarised a small part of what we discussed below. I'm happy to discuss the rest of our conversation too, if you're interested, but we covered too much ground to summarise easily here. Since then, things have moved quite quickly and it seems there are a few concrete things we could ask for that dovetail quite nicely with funds that the council has secured for capital investment in local roads. For details of what I propose to ask for, see below.

# Traffic counting data from CCRd

Below are a few key data on speeds for CCRd over all time (16th August–24th Octber 2024), for school holidays (16th August–1st September 2024) and for school term time (9th September–20th October 2024, dates chosen to avoid INSET days and private school half-term). The data selected are the proportion of all daytime four-wheeled motor traffic exceeding 24mph and the proportion exceeding 31mph. In both cases, the proportion is listed both with the inclusion and with the exclusion of near-stationary (0–6mph) vehicles, on the assumption that these are caught in traffic and, given the opportunity, would have speeds distributed as per the rest of the population. Also listed is the speed bin containing the peak of the speed distribution.
- **All time**
- Speed distribution is bi-modal. Peaks in the 0–6mph and 26–31mph bins.
- 39.22% exceed 24mph.
- 46.65% exceed 24mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.
- 19.35% exceed 31mph.
- 23.01% exceed 31mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.
- **School summer holidays**
- Speed distribution is bi-modal. Peaks in the 0–6mph and 26–31mph bins.
- 42.10% exceed 24mph.
- 52.64% exceed 24mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.
- 21.52% exceed 31mph.
- 26.91% exceed 31mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.
- **School term**
- Peak of speed distribution is in the 26–31mph bin.
- 38.91% exceed 24mph.
- 43.65% exceed 24mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.
- 18.35% exceed 31mph.
- 20.86% exceed 31mph, excluding near-stationary traffic.

To add additional weight to our concerns, the Telraam data show that CCRd has the highest proportion of heavier vehicles (a category that includes everything from light vans to buses and HGVs) of any Telraam site in the county.

# RH/HA/CCRd junction

Many people have raised the problem of the Rose Hill/Henley Avenue/Church Cowley Road junction lacking any pedestrian provision. Of relevance to this, I unearthed the some useful information after a little digging into Department for Transport guidance to local authorities on road design, signs and signals. §11.14.1 of ch. 6 (2019 edition) of the [DfT Traffic Signs Manual](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-manual), which is the current guidance, states that
>   Providing no signalised pedestrian facilities at all at a junction should be seen as the exception. A lack of formal facilities requires pedestrians to judge for themselves when to cross while traffic is held, which can be intimidating for those not familiar with the junction, and especially for visually impaired people and mobility impaired people. Generally, this is only acceptable where levels of pedestrian demand are very low and the width to be crossed is narrow. Examples of where it may be justified are at sites where there are no footways, at tunnel control sites or at bus gates, particularly where part of the site is not signal‑controlled.

It is also stated in §11.1.2 that
> Pedestrian demand should be assessed as part of any traffic signal design process, both for new junctions and for upgrades, and specific measures included in the design, unless site circumstances justify their exclusion.

Taken together, this seems to suggest firstly that the junction in its current state is not compliant with modern road design standards, and secondly that any redesign of the junction for any purpose must trigger a review of pedestrian provision. So the county council is rather compelled to introduce pedestrian facilities if it changes anything about the junction.

I mentioned this to Charlie and he had some good news and some bad news. On the positive side, the county council roads department are aware of the junction as a problem generally and it has quite high priority on their wish list of things to address. On the other hand, changes would be expensive and they do not currently have a suitable fund that they can draw on for this work. Added to that, the fact that this is a significant juntion in the city's stragtegic road network means that extensive traffic modelling would need to be done to work out how the timing of other nearby traffic lights would need to be adjusted to accommodate changes here. They believe that modelling would in turn be invalidated by knock-on effects the eventual reopening of the Botley Road. So, in effect, any changes here are sitting in a queue behind Network Rail/Thames Water finishing work on and around the Botley Road railway bridge.

# Alternative proposals

Charlie advised that, in the absence of a short term solution to the problems posed by the RH/HA/CCRd junction, there are cheaper alternatives that we could make a case for and which fit the brief for two funds that the county council has managed to secure. The first and smaller fund (about £800,000 in total) is specifically designated for improving safe crossings on the full length of Iffley Road/Henley Avenue/Rose Hill. The second, the so-called East Oxford mini-Hollands scheme, is larger (£2m per year for three years) and is earmarked for more generally for road safety improvements and for linking up areas in East Oxford for easier walking and cycling.

We discussed how best to make a case for this area and he had two key pieces of advice: firstly to ask for more than we expect to get and secondly to try to align our requests with existing council commitments. He particularly pointed to [this map of walking and cycling routes in Oxford](https://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/sites/default/files/file/roads-and-transport-connecting-oxfordshire/OxfordCycleandWalkingNetworkMap.pdf), to which the council has varying levels of commitment. We thrashed out the following specific requests for pedestrian crossings (either signal-controlled or zebra), in the knowledge that not all of them will succeed:
- On CCRd at/near the junction with Florence Park Road ([approximate location here](https://maps.app.goo.gl/aVMTfNCQkeMrjVax9)).
- On CCRd at/near the junction with Church Hill Road ([approximate location here](https://maps.app.goo.gl/hHUTajjDpCLAtyp2A)). There are residents there asking for this and it probably makes sense to align with them, since we have common cause.
- On HA at/near the more southerly junction with Iffley Turn, where there is an existing pedestrian refuge ([approximate location here](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QX3Kvev9Qv6nc2SA6)). This aligns with one of the marked routes (un-numbered) on the county council's walking and cycling map (link above).
- At the top of RH, to link up the two sections of public footpath from Iffley to Church Cowley on either side of the road ([approximate location here](https://maps.app.goo.gl/JDkrDvuywg1Xxc9q9), offset slightly to the south of the footpath itself because the west-side pavement on Rose Hill has been raised on an embankment). This aligns with route OXE10 on the council's walking and cycling map.
- Half-way down RH, linking the steps outside 23/25 RH or those outside 27/29 RH with the bottom of the footpath that leads up past the RH Methodist Church ([approximate location here](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6b6GqBGtyCV173FZ7)).

I'd really welcome people's thoughts on these. [I've added them all to a single map here](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1m6mzjHGSP6Q2c-wYLEjDoFMipXwwRZA&ll=51.7315459213689%2C-1.2246273923570117&z=16).

# Draft letter to Cllr Charlie Hicks