11:42am Tuesday 6th January 2009
By Chris Walker
Transport chief Ian Hudspeth vigorously defended the county council’s multi-million-pound plans to pedestrianise Oxford city centre at his first public question-and-answer session last night.
About 40 people turned up to Oxford City Council's south east area committee meeting in Littlemore to hear Mr Hudspeth, the county council's cabinet member for transport, outline the authority's Transform Oxford strategy, which could see all traffic removed from Queen Street, George Street, Magdalen Street and Broad Street.
Although there was some support for the plan in principle, Mr Hudspeth came under fire from residents concerned about the proposed removal of bus stops in the High Street and Queen Street and suggestion that they could have to change buses at the Plain to get to and from the city centre.
The county council was also criticised by city councillors Antonia Bance and John Tanner for the lack of consultation on the proposals so far and the lack of detail.
Mr Hudspeth said: “Transform Oxford is a vision. This isn’t about how you get into Oxford. We want to retain those bus passenger journeys into Oxford.
“This is about when you get into Oxford what the quality of your experience is.
“We’re not going to turn the Plain into a mass bus terminal, cutting off the east from the rest of Oxford - 75 per cent of people in the city live to the east of the Plain, so I’m as conscious as anybody we’re not going to cut them off.”
Mr Husdpeth added that although bus stops would be removed from Queen Street, they would be relocated nearby and he wanted to keep up the number of people travelling by bus into the city.
Pointing at pictures of buses clogging up Queen Street, Mr Hudspeth said: “Is that really what we want from a world-class city? Is that what Oxford is really all about?”
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