To: Oxford Mail
From Hazel Dawe, 53 Bulan Road, Oxford OX3 7HU – 18th July 2020
Tel 07944471083
Dear Editor
All credit to Katherine Miles for her courage in cycling along Warneford Lane with her children.(Oxford Mail 18 July) Warneford Lane is, indeed, dangerous for cyclists and the highways authority is well aware of the problem. I have been nearly car doored there, knocked off my bike by a driver thoughtlessly opening the car door as I cycled past. I know of others who have been.
But there is a solution, one which I have put forward to several council consultations. Warneford Lane is a dual carriageway. All it needs is one carriageway to become two way for traffic and the other carriageway two way for bicycles.
The open question is whether to include diagonal parking for cars on the cycling carriageway, with a very low speed limit, probably 5mph, or to have no parking at all. I don’t know who parks on Warneford Lane and why. Is it people who work at the Warneford Hospital?
The hospitals own master plan states that they will ‘ensure that the parking needs of those staff , patients, visitors and service provider who have no realistic option to using the care are considered and where feasible accommodated’ 1) In which case, presumably, the cars parked in Warneford Lane are not related to the hospital. The question remains whether that parking is necessary or whether Warneford Lane can be made truly safe for cycling.
Yours faithfully
Hazel Dawe