The £51 MILLION Park & Ride That You Can't Use - Eynsham, West Oxfordshire - Waste Of Money?
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- Опубликовано: 7 май 2024
- #infrastructure #oxford #cars #driving
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Well... this looks lovely, a brand new park and ride in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. One small catch though... after spending 50 million of your hard earned tax pounds, it's not open for use and it wont be for some time... read that as years.
Why would you spend 50 million quid to then not use something? And why isn't it open in the first place? In this video, we'll try to work out what lead to West Oxfordshire Councils interesting decisions.
*Special Thanks*
Oscars Garage - / @oscarsgarage447 
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I think the people of Oxford have been taken for a (park and) ride. 🤣
"Zoinks Scoob, I think you are right!", Shaggy proclaimed. "Raaah, rose Roxford reeple are reeelly rood. Heheheheh", Scooby said.
No no they haven't that is the issue
I see what you did there.
That's a John joke.
hard to believe
Well, that finally solved a mystery that scholars have puzzled over for generations. Stonehenge is actually a park & ride that is still waiting to open.
Not only that, it's a Park & Ride for Oxford!
Think Stonehenge is a solar calendar..
Thou perhaps it was a stone age park and ride?
Definitely out of town...
🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
🤣🤣🤣
Genius 😂
In a country where the roads are full of potholes, schools are falling apart and the elderly don't get the carers they need, this is outrageous.
That corporatism for you..
...
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Im lucky I live in Wales wich after uk join eu they quickly gather council money add eu grants and start building. Roads water pipes parks. There is tons of blue signs telling this and this was build thanks to eu money. Now after brexit all stopped and holes in road starting to slowly show up again. But its not terrible yet
That’s Tory councils for you. Someone got rich off this scheme, follow the money.
I bet you it’ll be a Tory donor or suchlike who is involved.
@sajuente8235 they just piss away money In other areas instead
£51,000,000 for 850 spaces = £60,000 per space. For that, I would expect at least a double garage with one of those automatic up and over doors.
The thing is, there's absolutely no way there are 850 spaces, at least in it's current stage both in this video, and in media elsewhere. Max 400, and I'm being generous.
The going rate seems to be around £10k per space for a surface car park so there's something fishy going on. The site was previously agricultural so there is no reason the council should have paid more than about £12k per acre. If it did then the landowner is profiting at the taxpayers' expense. I guess it's easy to splash the cash when it's other people's money.
Not just a car park though
Taking a parking space at 2.5m X 5m + 20% circulation space gives a cost per meter of £4k , thats double the current build cost of a house. That should be enough evidence for the fraud squad to be looking into this.
Incentives for finishing early are common in construction and can be substantial. I wonder if there were bonuses paid out for that.
No - not a 'Waste of Money' - it's a 'Colossal Waste of Money'
Not a waste of money. 1 mil for the job. 50 for their gold fund.
Shit Load of Money! Yea! Hahahahaha! 😇
ruclips.net/video/km0_vOE_2XE/видео.htmlsi=dKnLRlPqjpotPVze
It's £60,000 per (unused) parking space...
@@Bambagustrust Exactly. look at Any construction jobs awarded by councils, i was flabberghasted when the bridge at tadcaster took 13 months and £4.4 million to repair after the floods after an 'estimate' of £3 million. it's criminal negligence at best but corruption more likely. same with the bridge at elland costing £5 million. I think people are now that conditioned to seeing figures of millions & billions they don't realise just how much these sums that they ultimately have to pay for are, but no-ones going to spill the beans are they?
"and whilst that might seem like a waste of £51,000,000. It is"...🤣🤣🤣
By the time this gets opened it will have been vandalised into extinction and mature trees will have grown through the roads. What a total cock up. Someone should do jail time for this.
Well said
Probably won't get vandalized a huge amount as it's in a fairly remote location. And it looks like the council are spending money keeping the place maintained so their massive waste isn't toooootally wasted.
If this were in Australia, there would be tyre skidmarks all over it by now...
@@berenscott8999that’s why there is no road Conections lol! I live a few miles from this site and didn’t know it existed. Round these parts vandalism isn’t a massive worry but you never know, there is a secondary school in Eynsham!
The trees won't be an issue, as any council worth its salt will use a root barrier. If anything, it's better to plant them earlier and let them mature in time for its opening.
Even if it was open, £51m for 850 spaces is absolutely wild for a flat surface level car park with a few bus stops. Thats £60,000 per parking space! Someone has pocketed a massive wad of cash there.
nah, nobodys pocketed anything, thats just bureaucracy for you. the bureaucrats gotta get paid somehow.
@@Zeakthecat Totally disagree, anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that local authorities are corrupt and just enjoy spending money, sorry wasting money, on pointless and expensive projects.
@@Zeakthecatbureaucrats pocketed the money 😅
@@Mardukson nope, but the more workers you got the more they need to be paid, and of course the higher the wages the more money you have to pay.
and of courses its not just wages, everything else is needed for the bureaucracy to function, buildings, rent, and many others.
bloated bureaucracies often add to the cost, maybe advocate for your government to stomp out bureaucratic burdens that only increase the cost to do the same work for less?
When they built the new Sainsbury's in Farnborough they put a car park on the roof, there is no way to access it by motor vehicles.
Someone will manage to do it. Unitentionally. Probably confusing the barke and accelerator pedals - normal excuse for these types of shenanigans.
Maybe this is Jon's next trip out?
They knocked my flat down to build it 😢
@@ap9970your flat got flattened 😂
@@thebrowns5337 The barke pedal? Is that unique to the Vauxhall Cavalier? 🤔
this kind of shit, people need to go to jail for. Fucking disgusting corruption
It boils my piss
It really is difficult to tell malice from incompetance these days.
That's what the bad guys in jack reacher were involved in . Happens all over
🤷🏽♂️ just build the mosques
@@jack6450which is exactly what they rely on for protection!
I too cannot say "inflation" without then saying "inflaaaaaytion!!!!"
Inflaytion...!? Paula?
Ehhh Boutros Boutros-Ghali
@@AutoShenanigans Scorchio
I'm the man, and here's the road: 🛣
Road man road man road road road man man
If I've learned one thing from your videos, it's that incompetence eventually reaches a level where it's indistinguishable from malice.
This has multiple hallmarks of corruption.
Someone has a mate in the construction industry ... and they needed to spend the budget or the budget would go down ...
End of year and 50 million left in the kitty. Time to dust off those park and ride plans.
It's very embarassing to have to say "The project isn't going ahead...here's your brown paper envelope back"
TBF it does sometimes depend where the money comes from. Central Government can be a right pain for 'ring-fencing' money. I.E. it can only legally be spent on say, a park & ride, and the amount spent must match the bid entirely AND must be spent by a set date or you get none of it. That leads to stupidity like this.
We had electric bollards put in on local streets by our council. They weren't paying, Government set a certain amount aside for it and a private company chipped in as long as they got to lease them for a while. With the budget being only available in separate pots, during set times, they kept coming back to put infrastructure in different areas, even if it wasn't connected straight away. Otherwise they lost the cash for it. Don't get me wrong it's nice to be able to charge an EV on the road (at least if you own one, I imagine) but the ways it's done isn't the most efficient. And local folk won't understand it's either do it that way, because of daft Government rules, or miss out totally.
You should see what the United States Marine corps throws away in order to not lose money with budgets lol 😅
The waste is gargantuan.
@@ABrit-bt6ce They could EASILY have spent it fixing potholes, though, but they had to have the big shiny project instead.
So, my parents and (myself on and off) have been living near Enysham since the 80s. It's not far from Oxford, which is pushing out cars, and wanting make Park and rides further out from the city. What happened here is they asked for that 51 million to do the roads and the park and ride, spent it all on the P&R and didn't have any left for the road upgrades. They're now having to beg for more money from the government, and we know how that will go... No idea who thought building the P&R then not doing the roads would work....and im sure a nice private company got that money to do this. And no amount of new rods will fix that rod between Enysham and Oxford, Enysham itself has expanded so much traffic doesn't move at all.
It is a prime example of the morons at OCC.
And lining their own pockets too
Don’t forget the 2 years they spent making a bus lane that’s about a mile long between Yarnton and Oxford, which I’ve literally never seen a bus on since it opened.
Vote for the left - get incompetence
botley road being closed is also a nightmare at the moment, i dont know why they dont just let people use this park and ride now.
It's a classic tactic for schemes like this. Ask for less than you need, build less than you promised, then ask for more and argue that - if you don't get it - the original money will have been wasted. Either you get more money than agreed originally, or you can blame the lenders for refusing to fund the rest of the project - it's a win-win situation for the council and building contractors.
Whoever is responsible for this mess should go to jail this is fraud.
£51 million??? that's an incredible amount of money. once contractors get their snouts in the trough enabled by 'friendly' councillors, they charge what they want and these contracts don't easily get cancelled. It should be basically just a large asphalt slab with marked bays and access roads. As you say it's just criminal.
its complete incompetence jobs for the boys probably with a back hander
Care to explane, other than mad conspiracy theories rattling round your head, which part of this contraviens the law on fraud?
@@ianhudson2193 The part where they obtained £51M from central government by making the false claim that building a P&R that isn't even connected to the road network would improve transport links between Eynsham and Oxford.
@@beeble2003 Oh dear! Have you got on your nurse's computer without her knowing????
You'll get suspended from window licking class........again!
This is like the fully staffed hospital in Yes Minister with no plan for when they’ll open for patients.
It seems to me they'd be better off reopening the Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway. But that's too obvious.
Can’t reopen as much of it has been built on.
There is a plan for this being pushed by the Lib Dems, projected cost 900m
where will they build it?
£1bn, just for Witney to Yarnton halt
@@djmfaz goggle Witney Oxford Rail Link
How did they manage to spend £51 million on a car park? What's so special about it!
It doesn’t have any cars
With no road access to it they probably had to pay a farmer millions to cross their land with all the construction vehicles and material deliveries.
It didn't cost £151 million....
and then there is the up keep costs until its opened ! which will probably costs the same again..... dont they know about nature reclaiming unused roads.... MADNESS
Upkeep /security will probably exceed inflation savings by some margin.
I believe if you look into who won the contracts to build this thing you will find something interesting…
What Oxfordshire county council are doing with the A40 into Oxford is appalling. It is a major arterial road linking west and east, and motorist have every right to passage through Oxfordshire. Yet what they are doing with the A40 leading into Wolvercote roundabout, they are deliberately causing major traffic delay and have actually made it considerably worse for the motorists trying to bypass Oxford. Why haven’t they constructed new junctions to allow the traffic to bypass this awfully congested area. Instead they are building homes and hotels, that will make the situation worse.
If the people of Oxfordshire want to live in a car, truck free city, fine, but they have no right to do what they are doing to the A40, as it is a major arterial road for the country. Build a bypass, then we won’t have to go near bl***y Oxford. 🤬
This is happening in so many towns... adding massive housing developments but no way to avoid the congested centres. And the public transport argument they make is a complete joke if you are not commuting within a city or happen to be going between 2 places on the same line, can easily be a 3 hour+ option because 1 bus/train per hour connections where a car is under an hour peak times. I gave up here when realised evening and sunday busses to other major local places (like say Milton Keynes...) just don't even exist.
They do have a bypass in Oxford - it is called the ring road. It just no longer is. It is now just part of the suburbs.
Assuming its like other cities they legally can't refuse developers permission due to top level government mandates about housing targets. At the same time they can try and pat down developers for little infrastructure improvements here and there but nothing like the money needed for a functional master planned network. At least the A40 got dualled for that development you were lucky to get even that.
By the time it opens, it'll need a renovation and possibly resurfacing the tarmaq i'm guessing.
I live locally and this was to be a solution to traffic issues on the A40, the road from Cheltenham to Oxford, with towns like Burford, Northleach and Witney along the way.
This would help but the council asked at the time where the bus lanes were as it is unlikely that reduction in car use parking at Eynsham P&R would be enough.
Silence.
The local MP who trumpeted this has been silent on this announcement that the council hadn't got funding for the road access nor planning permission.
It's a massive cluster wotsit and hopefully will result in the local MP being voted out, if not tarred and feathered.
The people of West Oxfordshire are moving towards slightly miffed.
I'm moving towards the M40 north.
The developments at the A40 near the BMW dealer and just within the A34 have been progressing though. This video does rather conveniently ignore the elephant in the room (or lettuce perhaps?) that saw the council's budget in real terms plummet and borrowing costs soar. It's no secret that inflation in the construction sector has also far outpaced general consumer inflationary indexes. I agree its an unfortunate time in the project for all that to happen. But its clear that it also isn't the 'corruption' that only people commenting on the internet are able to detect....
I agree, in the main.
It's not corruption, more like incompetence and inability to run large projects.
Why build a large parking area but no entry to site, or even attempt to attach planning for the road entry in the same project?
That will mean further public consultation, processes to be completed in order to get planning at further cost when it could easily have been in the original planning?
Why did WODC planning approve this without having access to site?
Try that on a private property, see what happens.
Although it is OCC who provide the traffic impact assessment and therein lies the rub.
The odd thing is that it doesn't seem a bad idea if it were to be completed and opened straight away. The A40 is traffic clogged and so the buses would creep along in that at the same speed as cars. But passengers would still avoid having to park in Oxford itself (or at a different P+R) and if some transfer to the buses at Eynsham that would reduce the number of traffic movements and congestion a bit. So make the P+R free and the buses very cheap and see whether it builds up some usage. When the road improvements and bus lanes come that will give a further boost and the service can be increased.
@@karlosbricks2413 The Wolvercote roundabout construction was for the new £700 million life sciences innovation district Oxford North.
The original plans for the park and ride (approved in 2021) had an approved budget of £37M which included the access roads. It was also part of a larger plan to dual carriageway the A40 with possible bus lanes. This was all before the current Lib-Dem (traffic hating) councillor for transport Gant took control.
I'm guessing they're a Tory?
Is it just me who's sick of paying a substantial chunk of my income to keep my car roadworthy for roads that are never car-worthy? 🤔
Gotta love how there's red tape for everything but when it comes to building massive parking lots there's still nothing stopping us!
🎶 "It's the Playbus! Where does it go? Where does it stop?" Not here! 😡
Thank you, I was desperately wracking my brain for what that tune was!
@@derekmarshall6332ditto!
@@derekmarshall6332 😉
It's the why bird stop. (why did the council build this with no access) lol
Playdays before BBC went woke and had Educational programs on TV.
the whole place looks like the 3d rendering theyd use to demonstrate what they are going to build lol
It’s free money! They don’t have to earn it so they don’t care how they spend it.
Same with every council in the land.
The old story of how easy it is to spend other people's money. Whoever agreed to this should be in prison for fraud, theft et al.
I'm on a parish council, the bottom of the food chain when it comes to civic matters. We get to hear all sorts of going on with district and county councils. I seems the higher up and more power individuals have, the more incompetent they are. Can you guess how many EV charging points the district council's budget allows for this year? Two.
By the time that P&R is finally put to use you can bet they will have an additional cost of maintenance to add to it after sitting idle for years. As usual, nobody will be held accountable and the same people will get voted in again.
And the country wants to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in ten years time. Good luck!
Two ev charges was the £10k tax brake hmrc gave to any business in 2020-2023 that why thousands of companies and businesses only have two charge points. U spend 2k of a pair of chargers and got £10k off your tax bill
And if ur turn over was more than 500k you could claim up £60k of the price of a ev company or pool car.
Two too many.
Let the mental people charge them at home from what I hear unless it’s Tesla those chargers are far too expensive anyway, same cost if not more than fuel in some cases
@@AI-Records24 Not everything is about money. Sometimes it's about more important things like having clean air to breathe and an environment that isn't toxic to health. Saying that, we should get rid of cars in general. There are far too many. We need to invest heavily into integrated public transport systems that are reliable and affordable. Imagine how much better off everyone would be both financially and health wise if we had transit as good as in London everywhere else in the country? The big urban hubs at least should have such things. Then all the people obsessed with their cars who hate everything from public transport to cyclists to EV's or pedestrians (which you also are, by the way, when not in your metal box) will be happier because there'll be less traffic to get stuck in.
Two years from now, any items of any value will have been removed by the local entrepreneurial chavs and rendered into scrap metal. There will be numerous doughnut marks all over those nice clean disabled spaces, and by some horticultural process I don't fully understand, a crop of heavily damaged shopping trolleys will have sprung up like weeds all over the site, despite the fact that it is many miles from the nearest supermarket... or maybe things will be just fine. Who knows.
Two years...?
@@johnstilljohn3181 Give it a week 🤣
We will have to remind Jon to go check it out 24-36 months hence..
We all know .
Give it a month and it'll be full of caravans and empty of scrap metal. And the council won't be able to do a thing, even as their precious road surface is hauled away by a parade of dump trucks to be sold back to them to fix the damage.
Having worked in local authority, its unlikely corruption, but almost certainly incompetence
Agreed. Some people really seem to struggle with this, thinking that Local Authorities are all bribes, back-handers, brown envelopes etc, when in fact it is just shear mind-boggling incompetence, bureaurcracy and laziness.
The A40 to Oxford is one of the worst roads ever. You do not want to try and drive it in the morning. The PnR is a reasonable idea done terribly. The far better idea is to reinstate the railway to Witney (and hopefully to Lechlade, in Gloucestershire, maybe further, eg Fairford)
Oxfordshire county council have done some good things in the past.
1) They fixed the pothole that ruined my car tyre and my spine.
2) errrrr.
Nope that's it
If your tyre and spine were ruined by a pothole, maybe you should have slowed down.
Remember when that disgruntled nutter burned down all their offices a few years back ?
introduced 20 mph speed limits?
Wasn't going that fast, if I was the tractor I was behind certainly needs investigating.
@@djmfaz And then remove them….
A flat field, with tarmac and a few hard stand buildings... Why £51m?
Great video. Thanks, keep it up.
The upgrade of the electrical distribution network in the area to accommodate the he car park lighting, the CCTV, the barrier system, the bus station shelters, the IT system powering the signage and ticketing equipment.
It's never as simple as throwing a bit of tarmac on a field I'm afraid!
Corruption.
Land costs I'd guess
@@Sarge084that’s still nowhere near 51m for anyone except the council.
@@AI-Records24It is I'm afraid. These things cost, I guess if they decide to expand it in the future it will cost less per space, as the main infrastructure is there already. But don't tell the fools at the council that or they might decide to expand it just so they can say they got more value for money and give themselves a pat on the back
So much for paying large amounts of money to the town planning department!!!!!!
Pot holes 🕳 what pot holes?????
The playdays theme unlocked a core memory for me. Thank you
I think they should used that money for the railways that the uk stupidly shut downed in the 1960 instead of a bus park and ride that most likely going to be overcrowded and get stuck in traffic
The railway is at least £1bn though
You won't get much railway for 50mill
@@andyg3 No. You’ll need approx. another £950mill for Witney to Oxford
Well out of all the things that the uk has uselessly spent it might add up to the money to spend on railways one example of the uk wasting money is tarmac
@@davidleach6882 A ten-mile branch line isn't HS2.
"I'm not of the cynical type..." 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh, Jon, never change 😘
Oxford Council should have campaigned to get the Oxford to Fairford railway line reopened, and built a Park and Ride, further west, at Witney, close to the Colwell Brook, leaving space for a railway station to be connected to the Park and Ride in the future. The Park and Ride could have been hooked up to New Close Lane, which would have given it access to a roundabout that would connect it to both the westbound and eastbound directions of the A40. It would be a slightly suboptimal connection, but the connection could have gone in and started to earn back an income from the site.
Rail is also much, much higher capacity than roads, so it'll take a good amount of traffic off them at least for commuting.
There was one built like this with awful access and zero sign posting in Southport. After it sitting unused for over a decade the council has sold off the land to a deveoloper and the road access is suddenly being re-opened!
Which P&R is that in Southport?
@@mrlister2000 The one on Foul Lane
We can take solace in the fact that at least one person is happy about this. The builder.
Spot on mate 👌🏻 someone in charge of this clearly needs a reality check!
Also like to say what pleasure to meet you at the b.p garage on the Eynsham roundabout 🤙🏻we would have liked to chat a few more minutes but me my friend were already pretty pressed for time.
Playdays as the closing theme 😆😆😆 Where does it go? Where does it stop? Look for the sign on the lollipop! "STOP!!....... IT'S THE COLOSSAL WASTE OF MONEY STOP!"
Not too far to Chipping Norton - could be the park & ride to Clarkson's Farm and solve his parking problems.
West Oxfordshire council would demolish the park and ride first… The show has shown how childish and prejudice they are towards him……
He’s built his own car park now after getting an estimate of £100,000 to have one built. What they’ve done to his businesses is criminal, like him or not, begs the question… why does his cost £100,000 from a contractor and the councils cost 51 million? IIRC he ended up doing it for 50 odd k.
I waved at the start and you didn't wave back, I feel robbed.
He waved at me.
It must be a you problem.
He waved at me with both hands for 3 minutes!
Probably not the first time you've felt that way.
Maybe Jon only waves at important people?
..
I didn't see a way back so I can't be important enough...😟
@@stuartd9741 it's okay. maybe next time.
A similar story in Stoke-on-Trent where the council are "improving access to the train station" by reducing access to the train station !! Make it make sense !!
People shouldn't vote for these councillors
I was waiting for the M49 to come up, and you didn't disappoint. Cheers.
Placing a park and ride 10 miles outside of the city was always gonna be a stupid plan. Well unless they'd gone ahead with the idea of reinstating the Witney branch line and providing a train shuttle service into the city ...
Always has been. If people need to drive to the park and ride, they will just finish the rest of the journey in their cars
@@user-op8fg3ny3j I commute in from the west semi-regularly and need to get to the city centre, parking at Westgate is too expensive (And very difficult because of the Botley road closure) so this P&R would actually be really useful for me. Instead now I have to drive past a pointlessly closed P&R and go to the Botley P&R and hire one of those e-scooters.
Good job it's only six miles out then. And did you watch the video? The point is that they're building a whole new town there.
A couple more consultations and feasibility studies and i'm sure it'll all be sorted!
My family is from Norway and have family in this area. The Thornhill Park & Ride has been the meeting for us between airport busses and whoever gets us to where we want for years. The shuttles end in Oxford, and Eynsham might be too close to the city for the longer routes to the west
Reminded of the time that Peterborough was running a free park and ride just half a mile from my house. Went to use it and they asked me where my car was. Said I couldn't use it without a car. Had to walk home and drive car half a mile!
Peterborough remains what I reckon is still the largest city in the UK without a park and ride - "Environment City" after all. Although of course out of town shopping is much more popular now as it has free parking.
It's Oxfordshire, they hate cars. Ironically £50 million might have fixed some of the pot holes instead..
Fixing potholes isn't going to do anything for the traffic issue. It would be odd to build a park and ride if cars were hated, surely then the only option would be just get the train?
51 million quids worth of asphalt sat there doing FA when it would have been better used filling in bits of the existing roads that through organic use by motor vehicles and weathering have eroded into what we colloquially refer to as "potholes".
Just a thought
West Oxfordshire council are too busy yelling at Clarkson and his farm than they are about finishing this.
Spoiler alert......
The council got their just desserts from the independent Gov't arbitrator, but the poor taxpayers got landed with the bill for council's petty mindedness, their personal vendetta against JC, and spite
@@neilgodwin6531 I mean, Clarkson is a bit of a bell end. Well, massive bell end. Huge in fact. The biggest of bell ends in town.
"And whilst that may seem like a waste of 51 million pounds, it is."
30 seconds in to the first video of yours the algorithmn has recommended, and you've already got my subscription. Perfectly exectuted, dry, British humour.
Thanks for the shout out, great video as always.
Oxford hates cars ! The idea that people from Carterton or Witney would drive to this car park, park up and get on a bus to sit in the same traffic that was holding them up in the first place is laughable. As to the costs £51 million to make a car park is a farce.
That's why they want to build bus lanes. Buses are pretty useless when there is no infrastructure that allows them to skip traffic. With bus lanes it can become faster to take the bus than to drive, making more people take the bus rather than drive, and reducing the number of vehicles on the road. End result is less sitting in traffic for everyone.
@@piggeywig2000 But the bus lanes don’t exist and even if they did you would arrive at the Wolvercote roundabout with all the other cars and hope the Woodstock or Banbury roads were clear. The one scheme they seem to all avoid is the railway reinstatement from Oxford to Witney then onto Carterton.
@@piggeywig2000a public transit vehicle with its own dedicated path?
Might as well commit to rail at that point
@@user-op8fg3ny3j yes, a tram is ideal, but more expensive as it requires ripping up the roads to put rails down.
@@piggeywig2000 True. I'd just wish the councils saved money for it instead of wasting it on half measures
Omg what a treat, you're doing a video 5 mins down the road from me!
I drive past this every day, and every time always remark how it must be opening soon, as it’s all but done! I guess not…
People within council areas should be able to take group legal action against councils who waste their tax money.
So they can pay for two sets of legal fees as well on top.
@@paulketchupwitheverything767 Indeed, no matter how the council wastes money or fights action the tax payers end up financing it.
The only solution would be to set precedent whereby councillors could (ultimately) be held personally liable for the loss to taxpayers in a civil case.
The thought of asset seizure and a CCJ in extreme cases may help to keep people in elected positions of power honest and less inclined to throw other people’s money at sketchy projects.
when it eventually gets used for something someone has to pay to clean it up again. pavement that doesn't get used gets covered in nature
The A40 smart corridor project has long been a farce. OCC originally planned to just widen one side to add a new 5mile long bus lane inbound to Oxford (the original planning application in 2018/19 was for this version).
Then Boris handed out cheques like confetti and OCC hit the jackpot with a few hundred ££ million to add 2 new lanes to the A40. They scrapped plan A and threw all those plans in the bin and started again from scratch.
OCC then fell out with their appointed design & build contractor when costs soared and it blew the (large) budget. Hence the limbo it’s now in. Don’t hold your breath for it being built anytime soon, the Greens who control OCC don’t like new road building (I refer you to the Didcot HIFF bypass shenanigans)
How many potholes could be properly repaired for £51m 🤔. Oh yes Oxford hates cars
This is a complete fiasco; one which I drive past every day. Even if it was open, and working at peak capacity every single day, there is the small, inconvenient truth that around 25,000 vehicles use this stretch of road every day, so a few hundred vehicles worth of people put on a bus instead ain't going to make a busting lot of difference to anything.
Those 25000 vehicles include people travelling in both directions so, say, 600 people using the park and ride would be 1200 fewer vehicle journeys, which is about 5%. Things don't scale linearly, so 5% less traffic doesn't necessarily mean 5% shorter journey times. If that 5% reduction takes it from overloaded to running at capacity, it could (in theory) make a significant difference. But, anyway, as the video says, part of the plan was also to upgrade the road. Except they somehow spent £51M on something as simple as a car park.
If spent on hospitals, £50m would run Oxford University Healthcare NHS Trust for about three weeks. That may not seem like much, but that’s everything, all the hospitals, all the equipment, all the activity, and to pay the staff (all 13 and a half thousand of them). If spent as capital rather than operating costs that would put up a new wing or refurbish perhaps 20 wards. Alternatively if used to cut waiting lists £50m would pay 20 new consultants for 25 years. That’s just sone of what you can do in healthcare. In Education you could build half a new school or run ten average secondary schools for a year. Even in transport you could buy, say 250 new buses and pay a hundred drivers for ten years. Or you could just cut everyone’s council tax in that area by about £30.
All of these seem better than a car park that nobody can use.
That should't be down to local councils, that should all come from central government. In a more sane time, it did. And the NHS was in a far better place for it. We can afford all of these things as a country, we just need those in power with the political will to do it.
Love this channel!
Turn the councils vanity project into a racetrack? Nice smooth tarmac ❤❤
The play days music was perfect! I can’t work out if this episode was “the bus stop” because there were no buses or was it “the tent stop” as it appears there have been clowns at work!?
I know this looks silly, and by and large it is, but I can’t help but remember laughing at the Chinese for building a huge public transport hub in the middle of nowhere, serving nothing, only for a decade later to see the same station swamped by high-rise city development on what was previously a field. That was impressive, but the difference is obviously that the Chinese had a plan, and West Oxfordshire County Council probably don’t.
more than just having a plan, the Chinese have a massive population to support... West Oxfordshire County Council definitely don't have that
Definitely a plane.
OCC is a pioneer of smart city ideology.
..
In the future
(after 2030) When OCC bans all car due to the smart city.
Having a P&R will be the only way to get into town.
@@MercenaryPen For now! .. wait till they get their fair share of refugees!!
What I don’t understand is why what is essentially a large car park cost £51m. After all, there are no buildings, just an awful lot of tarmac, some paint, electrical supply and drainage.
There's landscaping too - that's got to be worth 10m at least ;)
Contract extension and scope changes. Estimate was probably less than £10 M
Purple underground trunking suggests fibre based CCTV hookup, plus there seems to be a couple of bog houses on that one building - probably needed a whole few miles of trench and associated works for them to be plumbed in. Oh, and theres the now obligatory EV charging nonsense thats a fair few quids worth of cable that wont be there on opening as the local tarmac botherers enjoy hunting and skinning cables.
Maybe you'd better learn some of the Freemason's mottos?
@@bri_in_brum I think that's where I've gone wrong in life. I've always believed that for things like this, you should pay a contractor for parts, labour, other contractor costs (e.g. fuel, office costs etc) and a reasonable profit margin (say 10%, or at most 20%). Sadly modern construction projects don't run on that basis..
Our local town has a disused park & ride, it was only ever open in the week before Christmas a couple of times. Then they used it as a test centre during Covid, but ever since it has sat unused.
Could turn it in to a TRUCK STOP .We need more truck parking
And here in wales there is a park and ride at Severn tunnel junction which is not used much if any at all, it was designed to 'relieve congestion on the M4' and a substitute for the M4 relief road
There was a park and ride just round the corner from me in Preston. It was built and opened, but never had a dedicated bus service, you had to walk out and stand at a bus stop and catch a regular circular bus route to get into the city, a journey that could easily take 30 minutes on a good day. Needless to say it closed pretty quickly and now has a motor dealer on it.
In fairness Oxford is much better organized with Park and Rides, and there has been work carried out along the A40 further into town, near where the BP and BMW dealer are, and the new developments there are nearing completion.
There's one at Craibstone in Aberdeen with no buses at all. It's a park & ?.
This is the best video I've ever seen about anything
I don't know about the other 129,999 subscribers, but I come to this place for the hard hitting investigative journalism. And sarcasm 😂😂
brilliant
I like the combined Disabled/elec charging parking spaces. That will be fun.
They're wider bays for disabled people who also have EVs. Those things are not mutually exclusive. If you're interested, look into Osprey charging and their efforts to make electric cars more accessible for disabled drivers.
Disabled people also own electric vehicles...
The alternative is to give them a choice between being able to charge their vehicles or being able to get out of their vehicles.
@@dave9614 ev's are trash, not even safe for the able bodied..they are not even environmentally better and the list of faults and short fallings goes on..
I hope while you were there you visited the Swinford Toll Bridge and paid your 5p to cross it!
Love the closing music!! Very appropriate
Well in 2 years time it will all need doing again as it will have fallen into a state of disrepair. Yet another local council mess up. Time that they were held accountable, but guess they all got voted back in again...
The practically abandoned public conveniences will not doubt become a dogging hotspot.
Well, it is technically a "park and ride".
@@tgheretford well played sir.
Given that there was a "proper" dualling proposed for the A40 in the late 80s (and by proper I mean neo-motorway standard) and nothing happened, I wouldnt hold my breath on A40 updates. Ideally, they ought to reopen the railway into Oxford (maybe from as far away as Witney and/or Carterton) because the A40 can be a nightmare for traific into Oxford. (yes - spent my formative years in Witney). Maybe even construct a new station at the "park and ride" - might work. Still, no getting away from the fact the nightmare traffic corridor of the A40 has not really got better over the years.
Dualling plans for the A40 were first mooted in the 60's
I remember when the A40 was 3 lanes wide, we called the middle lane the suicide lane! 😱
@@bobbeats Indeed so. One of several roads (the A5 was another) which had suicide lanes.
Biggest waste of money is currently happening in a town called Midsomer Norton Somerset. The council are spending millions to remove a bus stop and add a few market stalls. Oh and turning a free car park to paying which will destroy the town completely
would make an excellent video for the channel
A better idea would be to make the car park a bus station and put on more services to the surrounding towns, so people can still get there without having to drive and park.
Excellent work Jon. Looks like you've found the famous "White Elephant" of the A40
It’s the Why bird stop!! Legendary Jon. Never fail to disappoint 👌🏻👌🏻
Oxford's park and rides have been frequently taken over by the traveller community in the last ten years. It takes a while before they can eventually be ejected. They will be delighted to find that there's a spanking new temporary home for them.
Perhaps a good reason why it is not connected to any roads.
The Playdays theme to end another great video. Can’t beat the childhood memories.
Nice nod to busses with the Playdays theme.
I have long been convinced that road planners are incompetent idiots. Thank you for your video that proves the point.
I also wonder if ALL road schemes should be passed to you for scrutiny prior to authorising their construction.
There's a very high chance road planners do NOT drive....
its like the 'upgraded' roundabout by the BP as you go into oxford.... pointless.... they needed to have constructed a road to directly connect A40 to the dual carriage way. Another council which is clueless
Absolutely my view too. What were they doing there?! Things are just getting worse at worse at the Wolvercote roundabout and no relief road to the A34!
Sneaked in the play bus theme tune at the end. Haha classic
I’ve always wanted to look at this - but can’t get to it…❤
All my homies hate West Oxfordshire District Council😂
Very interesting. You do that it's the County Council not WODC that is responsible for this project?
Few years time it won’t be looking as pristine and ready for use, will need a few million spending “bringing it up to standard”
Hats off for the usage of the Playdays theme.
Balfour Beatty are the only ones park and riding all the way to the bank. Well perhaps not the only ones, maybe they will, coincidentally of course, meet a few councillors queuing at the desk at the bank too.
How does a bit of tarmac and paint cost £51M? Did they hire someone's brother-in-law to do it or one of those chaps that come to your door who swear blind they are not gypsies?.
£1m for paint & tarmac, £50m for consultants
i like your response its a good question
Drifters will find a way there in a few weeks. And in two years, not a single piece of metal will be left.
Do you mean gypsies?
Loved the video. Where have you bought the E38 diagram?
£66000 per space - money well spent.
Monorail anyone :)
I love this new Green Drive. Basically pave over the rest of the countryside so we don't drive?!