£3.2m Woodstock Road improvements now complete
Residents and visitors along Woodstock Road in Oxford can enjoy enhanced public spaces and better conditions for cycling, walking and wheeling as £3.2 million of road safety and active travel improvements along Woodstock Road are now complete.
The Oxfordshire County Council project, funded by the UK government’s Housing and Growth Deal, has delivered a series of highway improvements along Woodstock Road, from Wolvercote roundabout to St Giles.
Councillor Judy Roberts, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Place, Environment and Climate Action, said: “I am delighted to see the beautifully designed improvements on Woodstock Road completed. Not only is it a visual improvement, crucially it’s safer for pedestrians and cyclists. This much better accessibility is part of our plan to give people genuine options to use sustainable ways of travelling on one of the major roads in the city. And to top it off, it is all looking lovely.”
In the image above from left to right: Valerie Lambrechts, Joe Bates, Patrick Mulvihill, Craig Buzzard, Helen Fallon, and Councillors Judy Roberts, Louise Upton, Andrew Gant and Emma Garnett.
The active travel improvements include:
- New and improved side road crossings, with wider pavement space; ‘at level’ shorter crossing distances for people walking and wheeling; and increased gradient of ramps for vehicles entering the side roads between and including Bevington Road and St. Margaret's Road.
- A new parallel crossing on Woodstock Road just south of Bevington Road.
- Extending the off-road cycle path on the western side of Woodstock Road between the junctions of Frenchay Road and St Margaret's Road.
- A new full-time bus stop clearway on the east side of Woodstock Road just north of the junction with St Giles.
- Local relocation of a marked parking bay (limited stay parking) outside Belsyre Court to accommodate an informal pedestrian crossing.
The scheme was designed by the council’s principal highways maintenance contractor, M Group. The work has been shortlisted for two awards in the annual Highways Magazine’s Highways Awards – active travel scheme of the year and small project of the year – with the results to be announced in September.
Craig Buzzard, Senior Project Manager, M Group Civil Projects, said: “It’s been a privilege to work collaboratively with Oxfordshire County Council to deliver a scheme of real significance to the local community. The project introduces safer and wider footway crossings to enhance access into Oxford city centre; improvements we hope will be warmly welcomed by both pedestrians and cyclists.
“The scheme also includes 215m² of landscaped areas and achieves measurable carbon savings through careful material selection, which reflects M Group’s dedication to delivering infrastructure that is not only functional but also environmentally responsible and community focused.”
The Woodstock Road corridor project has also included a reversal of the direction of the bus lane between Wolvercote (A40) and Squitchey Lane. This was consulted on for six months from September 2024 and has been implemented as a trial through an experimental traffic regulation order (ETRO). A decision whether to make the bus lane reversal permanent will be made by the cabinet member for transport management in 2026.
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