The Daily Telegraph has published an article that could best be described as “highly critical” of Oxfordshire County Council’s controversial park and ride scheme in Eynsham. Construction of the £51m, 850-space facility was completed in January but drivers are likely to have to wait up to three years in order to use it as it is not yet connected to the A40, the road it has been designed to relieve.
For a car park outside one of England’s most congested cities, Eynsham park and ride is a remarkably peaceful place, says the article. Bright, freshly painted white lines lie unmolested on the virgin tarmac, writes Ed Cummins and Natasha Leake. The only sign of human life is a security guard, perhaps the most bored man in Oxfordshire, who sits waiting to shoo away anyone who threatens to disturb the tranquillity.
No, Eynsham park and ride is no place for motor vehicles. Or at least it will not be for a few years. Although the car park was finished earlier this year, with 850 spaces and at a cost of £51m, it has yet to be connected to the A40 that roars alongside it. At the earliest estimate, the park and ride will not be operational until 2027, according the article that can be found in full here.
While the white elephant car park might lie quiet, it has caused quite a ruckus. It is the latest flashpoint in the ongoing battle over cars in Oxford, which has been one the country’s most fraught.
“It’s completely crazy,” says Edmund King, president of the AA. “It’s even got electric charging bays, cycle parking, everything you need for integrated transport apart from the road to connect it. It beggars belief, what could they use it for? A film set, a skateboard park? Could they let learners in there [to] learn how to park? These things need to be joined up. The problem is they’ve invested the money and now if they have to wait two years to get the road access, it still needs to be maintained or else it will become totally overgrown. It’s a waste of resources either way. It’s a shame that the planning here has been totally bungled and it’s going to lie derelict.”
Locals are also enraged. “The general consensus is that [the car park] is a huge waste of money,” says the owner of Evenlode DIY, a local shop in Eynsham which sells household and gardening goods. “[The money required to maintain it for three years] is a complete waste; you’d much rather they were spending that money on things that are actually needed at the moment.”
The council believes that the new park and ride could cut up to a third of the peak traffic in each direction between Witney and Oxford, providing “regular and reliable public transport services” into the latter. About 32,000 vehicles use this stretch of the A40 every day. Funding for the car park and associated roadworks was approved in December 2021 and work began the following year, but cost pressures caused the part-cancellation of improvements to the A40, of which the access road was part.
A spokesperson for Oxfordshire county council said: “The council decided to go ahead with the Eynsham park and ride scheme which was funded by a ring-fenced and non-indexed grant award and had obtained all the relevant consents and approvals to allow it to proceed to construction. Any delays to the park and ride construction would have caused inflationary pressures to impact its affordability. Going ahead with construction of the park and ride site has saved millions of pounds in inflation and construction costs. This was a conscious decision, taken at a time when costs were rising rapidly across all industries.”
Changes to the A40 improvement scheme were submitted last September and now need to be approved by Homes England and DfT, which is funding the works and park and ride. The lengthy bureaucratic processes involved mean the car park is unlikely to be connected to the trunk road for a few years yet.
“I think it was perfectly reasonable they built it when they did with the money they had,” says Zuhura Plummer, campaign director for Oxfordshire Liveable Streets. “They would have had quotes from before inflation started to go crazy, so you want to get it built when your quotes are going to be less. But obviously it’s frustrating that they didn’t finish the access road.”
(Pic – Oxfordshire County Council)
