Oxford has a dual cycle network. The main routes follow normal traffic corridors. There are quite a lot of cycle lanes, traffic is not too bad, the junctions are OK, but we need to take care around buses. The quiet routes avoid the traffic (mostly). See the map for more detail.
Oxford also, critically, has excellent bus services (a bus every few minutes on all the main corridors), which has allowed traffic to be reduced substantially over the years. See bus map and central bus stop guide.
Understanding Oxford’s Dual Network
Oxford has a very constrained road network, with major rivers running north-south, and all main roads fanning out from the centre. In the sixties, bridges were built across the rivers about two kilometres north and south of the centre, and a ring road built round the edge of the built-up area. But the inner relief road across Christchurch Meadow was not built. So instead…
Starting in the seventies, cycle lanes and bus lanes have been marked on most of Oxford’s main roads. Oxford was one of the first cities to put in cycle lanes, and found that it could be done safely, as long as (1) the cycle lanes were continuous across side roads, and (2) a reasonable amount of room was left around parking. Most of Oxford’s cycle lanes are quite narrow, but this doesn’t seem to cause a safety problem. We prefer wider cycle lanes, for comfort, but we recognise this sometimes has to be balanced against competing demands for roadspace.
Parking on main roads has mostly been removed (in some places it has been put into bays). There are still some gaps in the cycle lanes, where the road is narrow or where there is still parking: our proposal for LTP3 is that many of these be addressed.
The bus lanes (and bus priority lights) mean that buses get significant priority over cars. In most cities, buses spend the rush hour stuck in traffic; in Oxford they get to their destination then come back to pick up some more passengers. This makes it a lot cheaper for bus companies to provide the service (fewer buses and drivers), so we have modern low-floor clean-burn buses, and several competing bus companies.
There are two consequences of the excellent buses: (1) fewer cyclists, because some potential cyclists use the bus, and (2) political acceptance that car-access can be actively discouraged, to the point that there are considerably fewer cars on the main roads than you might expect.
So Oxford is one of the few places where cyclists really can use all the roads. There isn’t too horrendous a volume of traffic, it doesn’t go very fast, and the junctions are mostly OK. We have to look out for buses, but at least they’re fairly easy to spot, and they know we know who they are.
In Denmark and the Netherlands, cycle routes tend to run on a mix of quieter roads and tracks alongside busy main roads. In Oxford we’ve ended up with a different approach: the main cycle routes are on the traditional main roads, and are used by most adult cyclists. Since the eighties, we’ve also copied Dutch/Danish practice, by making quiet cycle routes away from the main roads, initially as Safe Routes to School, but latterly to provide a coherent alternative for those who prefer it. But generally, the quiet routes are used by many fewer cyclists than the main routes.
As a result, the focus of the cycle campaign is dealing with the gaps in the cycle lanes on the main roads. This is where most cyclists want to be. We also want the quiet routes to be properly signposted, and minor problems dealt with, so that there’s a reasonable alternative to the main roads when you first start cycling or when cycling with children.
We are also trying to learn to love the buses. This is difficult for hardened cyclists, but it is clear that buses have made a huge positive difference to Oxford, and the more of them the better.
