"Roland Perry" wrote in message
.uk...
In message .com, at
08:54:36 on Sun, 28 Aug 2005, Pred02 remarked:
My friend got an offer in Oxford for work. However, he wants to live in
London (Paddington area) and commute to Oxford for work. Does anyone
have experience wit h the following route, and if so what are the pros
and cons of everything.

Oxford Tube (bus): Cheap and relatively efficient, not sure where
nearest stop is.
Train: Bigger and more expensive, probably faster.
Car: Going against the London tidal flow (once you've go to the A40)
but will be very slow at the Oxford end. [Not quite sure how the
bus deals with that - are there lots of bus lanes?] Parking a
nightmare unless his work has provision, but if the work is more
than a couple of miles from the bus/train station, having a car
could save that leg twice a day.

Driving into Oxford is horrendous. Is your friend working in the centre of
Oxford or on the outskirts. There are bus lanes down the Banbury and (I
think) Woodstock roads from the north, using the Peartree or Water Eaton
park and ride buses. I think the London Road (A40) through Kidlington has
bus lanes in places, but they are certainly not along the whole length;
that's accessible via theThornhill P&R buses. The Abingdon Road (Redbridge
P&R) is a dead loss: for as long as I've live near Oxford, it has been
disrupted by one set of roadworks or another. Since the road is only just
wide enough for one lane in each direction, there's no room for a bus lane,
and at present it's single alternate line traffic around the Donnington
Bridge Road junction. The Botley Road (Seacourt P&R) has a bus lane along
most of its length, but the last half mile or so from Osney Mead under the
railway bridge to the open area opposite the Said Business School has no bus
lane and gets clogged solid with traffic. Consequently, most of the P&R
buses don't have much of a speed advantage over cars. The main advantage of
them is to avoid needing to park in the city centre rather than to get there
quicker.

It's a great shame that there isn't a railway station adjoining the
Redbridge P&R to ferry people into Oxford station to cover the critical
couple of miles through the outskirts - and similarly one at Kidlington
would be good to take people from the north.

Has your friend thought of getting a collapsible bike and cycling into
Oxford from a P&R car park? A couple of the car parks (and I think Thornhill
on the east side is one of them) have just stopped charging for parking so
it wouldn't even cost him anything. Sadly the two P&R car parks that I would
use (Redbridge and Seacourt) are run by the city council rather than county
council who will continue to charge for parking as well as the bus.