Traffic Filter FAQs

Oxfordshire’s population is growing. We are part of the Ox-Cam arc, a region of the UK being developed as a hub for research, innovation and tech. This means a lot of jobs are being created, and a lot of houses being built to accommodate them. This is, in many ways, a positive thing!

Oxfordshire’s population grew by 11% from 2011-2021, and is expected to increase another 15% from 2021-2031. 100,000 new homes are also being built around the county from 2011-2031. 100,000 new homes means about 142,000 new cars (we have 1.42 cars per household in the South East). Some of these new households won’t be coming into Oxford much, but even if just one in ten drive into the city for work, leisure or services, that will be a huge increase in the number of cars on the road that we don’t have the space for. 

Whether or not we like the new housing, we need a plan to deal with all of these additional cars on our roads. Otherwise, the traffic will continue to grow, and buses will become less and less able to run effectively. This will make it harder and harder for people who don’t have a car (and even those who do!) to get where they need to go.

In order to keep Oxford moving in this time of growth, 1 in 4 motor journeys through Oxford need to be swapped to another mode of transport. This could include using buses, liftshares, bikes, or delivery alternatives. Not all of us are able to swap journeys, but many of us can! We all need to do our part to the extent that we can.

Oxford’s traffic filters are being put in to incentivise people to make these swaps and reduce traffic. Once we have fewer cars on the road, the buses can speed up and walking and cycling will be safer and more pleasant. This will give people more genuine alternatives to driving.

People won’t suddenly swap to buses if buses are unreliable and slow because they are caught up in lots of traffic. We’ve added all the bus lanes possible on arterial roads, so the only remaining way to speed up buses is to reduce congestion. Fundamentally, we can’t reduce congestion without less driving. If we reduce congestion, buses will speed up, and be more reliable, and then people will have a genuine alternative to their cars.

The same is true of bikes. The biggest barrier to people starting cycling is the fear of being hit by a car. By reducing car numbers, we can make more space for proper cycle lanes and junction redesign. People will feel safer, cycle more, and use their car less.

We’re in a negative cycle right now. To create positive cycles where people have alternatives, we need to make car use less convenient, otherwise we are stuck.

We can spend a long time rejecting one solution, and then another, and then another. In that time, more houses will have been built, more cars will be on the road, and people’s habits and lives will be built around driving. We need to make a specific change before this happens.

Our current options are: 

Do nothing and put up with gridlock? This leaves us with no road space for faster buses or safer walking and cycling, which means that the 20% of Oxford residents without cars can’t get where they need to go.

Hope people drive less without any restrictions? We can’t do nothing and expect different results. People won’t spontaneously change their routine without being prompted to.

Continue debating and looking for the perfect policy? This kicks the can down the road and wastes time. There’s no magic wand that removes traffic without requiring anyone to change their behavior. 

Try something? We need to start somewhere, so we are going to trial the traffic filters and make any necessary adjustments from there.

The majority of Oxford’s population lives east of the city centre, east of the railway line and east of Oxford’s two rivers. As a result, if you don’t have the eastern filters, you won’t create widespread change across the whole population of Oxford. In order to successfully reduce traffic, we all need to act together across the entire city, at the same time.

The filters don’t work in isolation - each one is needed as part of a systemic whole. We need a city wide approach, with everyone in. Not a solution which ignores where most people live and drive. 

Also, a key part of the bus service improvements happening as a result of the traffic filters are the two new eastern arc bus routes that will start running on the day the filters go in. These will be transformational for people getting around this densely populated part of the city - being able to travel north to south in the east without having to change in the centre of town. The currently confirmed route runs from Redbridge P&R – Oxford Science Park – Cowley – Headington – JR Hospital – Thornhill P&R. The Marston Ferry Road and Hollow Way filters are necessary for these eastern routes to run efficiently.

No, it’s also about health and helping ensure our NHS will be around for our children and our grandchildren. 

We’re moving a lot, lot less than we used to, and the NHS is picking up the pieces. 

The NHS is struggling for many reasons, but one reason is that we are way more sedentary than we used to be and this is dramatically increasing the number of conditions the NHS has to treat. Working at desks, using TV and phones for entertainment, and traveling by car make it easy to sit all day. The Royal College of Surgeons has called exercise a “miracle cure.” They claim that “Being physically active reduces a person’s risk of dementia by 30%, depression by 30%, heart disease by 40%, type 2 diabetes by 40%, breast cancer by 25% and osteoporosis by 50%.” They also point out that 70% of NHS spend is associated with chronic illnesses such as these. So moving our bodies more is good for both us and the NHS! 

The above benefits come when people exercise for 150 minutes per week–about 20 minutes per day. And exercise doesn’t have to mean going to a gym. It can be as simple as walking or biking where you need to go (or even part of the way!). Policies like Oxford’s traffic filters should make it easier for people to make healthier choices for themselves, by making it safer and more pleasant to walk or cycle, and easier to catch a bus.

The traffic filters are also projected to help lower air pollution levels in 67 out of 74 monitored locations. The drops in air pollution are expected to come about due to the increasing number of electric cars, the electric buses being rolled out because of filters, and the anticipated 20% reduction in traffic reductions from filters.

These drops in air pollution are greatest in areas where large numbers of people are living, working, shopping, and walking about, which is good news for our health. Air pollution has been found to cause low birth weight in infants, asthma and development problems in children, heart and lung disease, stroke and cancer in adults, and dementia in older adults. A 2019 study also found that roadside air pollution was stunting lung growth in children by about 14% in Oxford, and that cutting air pollution by 20% would reduce the number of lung cancer cases in Oxford by 6%.

Cars are very convenient for some journeys, but they have a lot of downsides. Here are some examples:

1. Cars kill people: 4–5 people are killed every day on the UK’s roads. Another 71 are seriously injured. It’s a leading cause of death in Europe for children aged 5–14.

2. Cars discourage us from walking and cycling as part of our daily life: Inactivity is linked to 20 health conditions, and this costs the NHS nearly a billion pounds a year. Many of us don’t have the time or money for gyms or sport, but getting somewhere while also being active can be a habit that really sticks. But cars stop us, either by being more convenient than our good intentions, or by making walking too unpleasant or many of us too scared to cycle.

3. Cars cause pollution that harms our health: Tyres and brake pads on cars wear down over time, and enter the air as very, very tiny microplastics. These pollute the air we breathe as well as our water and soil, and they contain a wide range of toxic compounds, including many known to cause cancer. Due to their small size, they can enter our bloodstream and are showing up in the placentas of unborn babies, in human ovaries and testicles amongst other places.

4. Cars take up communal space: Cars take up space on streets and in towns which could be used for housing, parks, sports pitches or places for children to play, trees and wildlife spaces, markets, open air events and much more. Think how beautiful our ancient city would be if you could see the houses and buildings without lots of cars parked in front of them! And beauty matters to everyone.

5. Car traffic limits community interactions: People don’t like crossing busy roads, they don’t like walking or hanging out on them, and children don’t play on them. In 1973, 75% of children played on the street near their house. Now it’s 15%. 

6. Cars cause noise pollution: This is an under-considered impact of cars. Long-term exposure to noise, even at the levels we are used to in urban areas, has significant health impacts on our sleep, our hearts, and our stress levels.  

7. Cars emit a lot of greenhouse gases through their exhaust pipes: A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year, as well as five other key pollutants. The main impact of the CO2 is the incredibly fast heating of our only home, the only known habitable planet in the universe. 

8. Car infrastructure is resource intensive: Roads, bridges, and cars parks all require vast amounts of concrete and steel to manufacture. Not only are these greenhouse gas intensive, but they are heat sinks. They trap heat in the summer, amplifying the impact of heatwaves on people and wildlife. 

9. Cars take a huge amount of energy to manufacture: A car will emit about half of the greenhouse gases it will produce over its lifeime before it has even hit the road. Larger cars, such ad 4x4s and SUVs emit about twice as much as a standard-size car. They also take energy to dispose, break down, or recycle. 

10. Cars kill wildlife: They’re the leading cause of death of barn owls, and they kill 50,000 badgers and between 167,000 and 335,000 hedgehogs in the UK every year, as well as many other animals, including otters, foxes, deer, birds, frogs and toads. 

11. Cars kill our pets: Around 630 cats are run over every day, with 25% of those dying of their injuries. Many dogs will also be killed by cars, but the data on this is extremely hard to find. 

No! Traffic filters, or similar policies such as destination-only traffic measures, have been in established or announced in several other cities around Europe and the UK. Some examples:

• Groningen - 1970

• Ghent - 2017

• Brussels - 2022

• Lisbon - 2023

• Paris - 2024

• Canterbury, Dublin, Amsterdam, Birmingham - announced, but no timeline

Other traffic reduction measures have also been tried around the globe, such as:

Congestion charges:

• Singapore - 1975

• London - 2003

• Stockholm - 2007

• Milan - 2012

• Gothenburg - 2013

• New York City - 2023

• San Francisco - 2023

Workplace parking levy:

• Nottingham - 2011

• Edinburgh - proposed in 2023

Clean air zone:

• Bristol

• Birmingham

• London