Last week’s cheering news that the High Court has deemed Lambeth Council’s imposition of a Low Traffic Neighbourhood on West Dulwich ‘unlawful’, because they failed to take consultations with locals into sufficient account, has given a glimmer of hope to the benighted residents of Cowley in Oxford. In that once liveable outskirt, gridlock on the main roads caused by the imposition of the Cowley LTN has closed down previously thriving small businesses, so that, far from being the utopian ‘15-minute city’ dreamed up by councillors, residents can no longer walk to a printer, a post office or the Co-op. Driving to central Oxford takes ages, and it costs up to £17 to park on a meter for two hours. The buses are slow, expensive and unreliable. You wait twenty minutes, only to be stuck in a traffic jam.
It’s known as ‘Gant’s Gridlock’, after Councillor Andrew Gant, Oxfordshire CountyCouncil’s Lib Dem Cabinet Minister for Transport Management. Gant is fanatic-in-chief when it comes to sustained efforts to find new ways of clamping down on anyone in Oxford getting from A to B by car.
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