Council Votes To Keep Oxford’s LTN Which Conspiracy Theorists Confuse With 15-Minute City Plans

Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet has voted to keep the East Oxford Low Traffic Neighborhoods (LTN). Last year this and other Oxford LTNs were falsely linked with proposals to introduce to the city elements of the 15-Minute City urban design concept.

There was a large crowd outside county hall protesting against the LTNs. “Keep Oxford free; no to 15 Minute City,” said one of the protestor’s placards; there were many more in the same vein.

Oxfordshire County Council is the region’s highway authority and usually works closely with the Labour-run city council on schemes affecting Oxford.

The county council is led by a coalition of 24 Liberal Democrat and Green councillors. There are also 22 Conservatives, 14 Labour, and three independent councillors.

“We understand that cars still have a role to play in our transport system,” said the council leader Liz Leffman earlier this year, “but we want to make it quicker, cheaper and safer for residents across the county to leave their cars at home and travel actively, for example, by walking, cycling, scooting or using buses.”

“This will make our streets cleaner, safer and less congested,” she said, “and help those who need to use cars to make their essential journeys.”

She added: “Tackling climate change underpins all we do. The climate emergency is the biggest challenge the planet faces.”

Oxford’s LTNs—installed as trials in May 2022 and subject of several national TV documentaries—are either closed to motorists with bollards and planters or policed with automatic number plate recognition cameras (ANPR). Taxi drivers are allowed to access some of the ANPR-policed LTNs.

Nearly 30 speakers aired their views at the October 17 cabinet meeting, stated local democracy reporter Oxford Clarion on Twitter/X.

Bernadette Evans of Oxford Business Action Group urged for the LTNs to be removed. She said: “Multiple highly experienced business owners have told us trading conditions changed overnight when the LTNs went in. The loss of trade has meant an increase in debt.”

“The LTNs are not a silver bullet,” said Chris Jarvis, leader of Oxford’s Green councillors. “But we need to take meaningful action. Air quality has improved, cycling is up, road collisions are down, walking is more pleasant, teenagers are playing football in the street. These are real, tangible benefits.”

Residents gave opposing views of the LTNs.

“Until the LTNs went in I was too scared to cycle to work in Marston,” said Katie Mills. “The Cowley and East Oxford LTNs have made it safe. I have two children at schools in East Oxford, and I now have the confidence to cycle on the roads with them. The LTNs have been transformative.”

Maggie Brown vehemently disagreed: “I’ve lived in Oxford for 75 years and it’s being destroyed,” she said.

“We need access to all the roads in Oxford without any restrictions,” stated Bashir Ahmed City of Oxford Licensed Taxicab Association.

“The people are waking up and they are angry,” claimed local resident Anne Stares, who said LTN supporters were part of a “toxic alliance.”

In its Local Plan 2040, Oxford City Council proposed installing elements from the 15-minute city urban concept in neighborhoods throughout the city over the next 20 years. These plans included proposals to improve accessibility to local shops and other amenities for residents so they didn’t have to always drive.

Separately, Oxfordshire County Council announced traffic-reducing measures throughout the city, with infrastructure to encourage car travel around the city by using the ring road rather than already congested roads. Initial opposition to the plans led to proposals to introduce permit schemes to facilitate car travel at certain times, allowing car access to areas that the council planned to restrict to motorists.

However, these proposals—never implemented—were used by conspiracy theorists and others to claim that Oxfordshire County Council wanted to create “ghettos” where motorists would be confined and unable to leave.

Ahead of an anti-LTN, anti-15-minute-city protest in Oxford earlier this year, an organisation called Not Our Future distributed leaflets warning that the council was coming for residents’ cars.

“The reality is that in 2024 you, the people of Oxford, will be guinea pigs,” the leaflet claimed.

“You will all be subjects of a scheme known as 15-Minute Neighbourhoods. This sounds cute but it’s anything but. It’s a controlled system to restrict people from driving freely around the city,” it said, misrepresenting the planned traffic measures.

“All this is coming from the United Nations Agenda 30,” continued the leaflet.

“This includes the ultimate aim of moving the majority of the public to smart cities where all activity can be monitored to control people’s Personal Carbon Allowance,” it lied.

Investigative journalists at the DeSmog climate adaptation news website say Not Our Future is backed by a “high-profile climate deniers and conspiracy theorists based in the UK, Canada, the United States and Australia.”

On its website, Not Our Future warns: “The draconian and destructive response to Covid-19, involving the lockdown of entire populations, mandated injections and mask-wearing, and aggressive suppression of freedom of expression, could be a harbinger of things to come.”

And LTNs, it further warns, are also part of that future, as is going cashless.

“Central Bank Digital Currencies … have the potential to lock humanity in a dystopian control grid,” exaggerates the body, claiming that this grid would be a “de facto prison.”

Some commentators on social media—and at street demonstrations—claim that 15-Minute Cities are designed to confine people to within a certain distance of their homes, and that the urban design policy is a plot to attack personal freedoms or is “anti-motorist.”

Such conspiracy theories have gone mainstream in the U.K. “Right across our country, there is a Labour-backed movement to make cars harder to use, to make driving more expensive, and to remove your freedom to get from A to B how you want,” the U.K’s Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the Conservative Party conference earlier this month.

“I am calling time on the misuse of so-called 15-minute cities,” he added, even though no 15-Minute City exists in the U.K.

“What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate, is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV,” Harper added. Naturally, no councils have plans to restrict shopping trips.

Earlier this year fellow Tory MP Nick Fletcher had been the first to voice support for the conspiracy theory in the House of Commons. Fletcher told parliament—to guffaws—that the idea of 15-Minute Cities was an “international socialist concept” that will “cost our personal freedom.”

During the Conservative Party conference in Manchester Prime Minister Sunak took aim at 15 Minute Cities vowing to make sure drivers were not “aggressively restricted.”

Oxford County Council’s decision today will have been closely watched by councils around the U.K.

“Should we take a large amount of Oxford’s congestion and put it back on residential roads? asked LibDem councillor and the city council’s cabinet member for highways management Andrew Gant.

No, he concluded at the meeting. “Going back is not realistic. There is a lack of any alternative vision from those who oppose LTNs.”

He added: “We have all got too used to the idea that road space is something we can help ourselves to, as much as we like, whenever we like. It is a finite resource, and it is full. It comes at a cost. As a society, we are not making responsible use of it. We need to change.”