A Bridge Too Far

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One despairing local resident writes:

As if all this wasn’t enough, one of the Kier sub-sub-contractors, having been instructed to pump effluent out of the chasm under the bridge and into the main sewer, somehow managed to pump it into the streets of Osney Island and everyone’s gardens instead!

And, last month, the water main was broken, causing absolute traffic mayhem. Here’s a doorstep which (just about) escaped …

Baroness Ruth Deech lives in West Oxford. She has raised the matter in the House of Lords on several occasions (and says she would have done so more often had she been able to get to the railway station more easily). She writes:

This is a message for the whole country, and for the politicians, ministers, rail organisations, and construction companies, to let them know that the decisions they take at their computers and behind their desks are mechanical, impersonal, incompetent, unfeeling, and just plain wrong in this case, because they do not heed the needs and daily lives of those affected… ‘Nothing to do with me’, says one official, or one department to another; ‘not my responsibility’, says one branch of government to another; ‘can’t help it’, they all say to the businesses that are ruined, the patients in pain, the friendly people whose social life is blocked by their actions.

Layla Moran MP has extracted a commitment from Network Rail that they will provide a public update every six months – with an implicit understanding (surely) that the Transport Minister will come under pressure to resign if delivery by August 2026 is not achieved. She writes:

Network Rail’s shambolic mismanagement of this project has caused profound disruption to the people and businesses of West Oxford and beyond… This project has laid bare the complete lack of accountability and transparency in many of our institutions.’

John Mair, Jericho community activist and former TV producer writes:

This project has gone beyond a farce to become a local and national scandal. It will be taught in business and engineering schools in the future as an exemplar of how NOT to undertake what should have been a simple project.

Let’s not mince words. It is an utter disgrace. Lord Hendy should come back and face real people once a month until the road opens. And the current campaign should widen from just Botley Road residents to a total city-wide one as it has knock-on effects for everyone in Oxford.

Thom Airs, videographer, writes:

People get outraged at the mention of the Cutteslowe Walls; but this is effectively partition on a much greater and more disruptive scale …

Malcolm Graham, eminent local historian, was moved to send a letter to both the Oxford Mail and the Oxford Times putting the recent débâcle in context:

When British Rail rebuilt a section of the Botley Road Railway Bridge in 1979 The Oxford Times reported that Botley Road was closed on 9 September, and for two weekends, Saturday 27 October 4.45 a.m. until some time on Monday 29th (work overran beyond the scheduled 4.30 a.m.), and Saturday 3 November 2.30 a.m. until early on Monday 5th. The work involved replacing part of the old bridge with a pre-cast concrete and steel bridge which provided an extra six inches of headroom for the traffic below. The cost was £180,000.

He adds:

By complete coincidence last October I found a letter in the City Archives [OCA5/1/C5/5] from the City Engineer in 1905 expressing his concern about a GWR proposal to lower the road below the railway bridge. Perhaps because of his advice, the GWR chose not to go ahead with their proposal and simply widened the bridge. This was in 1907. I presume the present lowering is to ensure that huge HGVs won’t strike the bridge, but there must be cheaper ways of preventing that!

Our sincere thanks to Eduardo Calatayud for his superb drone photography, which exposes the full extent of the horror.

Professor Veronica Strang, a resident of Osney Island, points out:

Instead of widening the road under the railway bridge and making a safe cycle route (ie a wider cycle lane separated from other vehicles by a kerb), the developers are actually narrowing the road and removing the marked cycle lane. Cyclists are expected to go up onto the pavement to fight it out with pedestrians emerging from / rushing into the station, wheeling suitcases and prams. Meanwhile, the developers appear not to have noticed the huge increase in the number of electric scooters, e-bikes and delivery bikes on the road, who will be approaching this busy pedestrian convergence point at a much higher speed than ordinary cyclists.

So we can expect (a) more conflict between pedestrians and cyclists (b) more collisions and injuries to both groups and (c) more serious injuries or fatalities to cyclists who will persist in using the road anyway (as cyclists should be able to do) because weaving through busy crowds of pedestrians is simply too frustrating.

But according to the developers’ web site the ‘shared’ path for cyclists and pedestrians will only be required for one or two people anyway. And, rather presciently perhaps , their posters in the Tunnel of Doom suggest that travel under the bridge will shortly require a wheelchair. It appears that the ‘improved and safer road layout’ promised, is delivering improvements only to people driving large, polluting vehicles into the city.

Richard Cullen writes from a historic location:

It happens that I find myself reading this in an apartment that towers above the Rhine, little more than a kilometre upstream of the spot near the old church in Oosterbeek where some 2,400 allied servicemen crossed the river to safety on the night of 25 September 1944. Of the 10,000 who landed during the airborne operation at Arnhem they were the only ones to escape. The story of their heroism and that of the Dutch civilians caught up in the battle is well depicted in the film to which you allude, ‘A Bridge Too Far’.

There have been many explanations for the cause of this disaster; they include bad planning and hubris among the senior generals. But the defeat lives on as a glorious moment in military and civilian lore, remembered every September with pride and respect, and ‘airborne’ flags flutter from Dutch flagpoles; unlike the shambles at Oxford station, which is an irredeemable disgrace …

Father Christopher Woods is vicar to the churches of St Barnabas, Jericho and St Thomas the Martyr. He cares deeply about the well-being of his parishioners as this YouTube footage attests.

Getting through the Tunnel of Doom feels so interminable that Stephanie Jenkins had to double the speed of her video. Even so…

The last word (or is it?) on this desperate episode should go to Julian Le Vay who spearheaded the campaign to raise awareness of the plight of Botley Road residents.

When Network Rail sought the council’s approval to this project, it proudly announced that it would be necessary to close Botley Road for only four days. Today, Botley Road has finally reopened (20 September 2026) after being closed for 1,245 days. A 31,000% overrun, effortlessly outdoing even HS2!

Obviously, we’re glad to see this. But celebrations in West Oxford will be muted.

First, because the three-and-a-half-year closure has caused such serious and lasting damage – particularly, to small businesses (some of which have been forced to close) people with mobility problems (who haven’t been able to go into their own city for years) and those living near the station (who have endured over 100 nights of pile-driving and drilling just metres from their homes). To have this huge encampment in our midst and to be ordered here and there around our own town, has been deeply alienating.

Second, because the project is not over; in fact it’s barely halfway through. Work is only just starting, three years late, on the station itself, and is likely to take three more years, with construction noise and traffic getting worse, not better.

Third, because the traffic filter scheme now comes into operation, and the council itself predicts that will bring no improvement to historic levels of congestion, yet will prevent us driving freely into our own city.

Lastly, because no one in Network Rail or the Department of Transport or Kier or the city or county councils or Thames Water has been held to account for the damage they have done and are doing to our community. There has been no investigation into the complex reasons for this disaster. And if lessons are not learned, the same mistakes will be repeated elsewhere.

That’s why we support the demand by our MP Layla Moran and by Baroness Deech for the National Audit Office to carry out an investigation into the gross mismanagement of this project.