15min cities

Widely reported, for example

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-63901938.amp

https://airqualitynews.com/2022/12/09/oxford-councils-faces-abuse-due-to-misinformation-on-traffic-filters/

It is a £35 fine for driving on a filter you don't have a permit for, which rises to £70 if not paid within two weeks and your permit allows you to use any filter for 100 days per year, max three permits per household and applies 7am-7pm

https://oxfordshireguardian.co.uk/oxford-15-minute-city-low-traffic-neighbourhood-ltn/

Conspiracy nutters twist everything into a way to feel self pitying victims.

In South Dakota I was walking from my hotel to a restaurant across the street. Got stopped by police because walking was suspicious.
America is a shithole.

It is astonishing how badly the council have managed to screw up the comms on this. That BBC article is specifically meant as a countering-disinformation thing, and yet clearly they briefed the BBC that it was £70, no mention of the £35.

I think there's no extra barriers at all. No closed roads, bus gates, one ways or anything else. Just cameras and you have to stick in your zone or pay the fee but you can still drive anywhere up to 100 days every year. If you want to get to the other side of the city on the other 265 days, you have to first drive out of the city to the ring road to get to the other zones fee free.
But in theory everything you need will be within 15 minutes of you so except for commuting, visiting people or picking up your Mrs, you shouldn't need to drive. Which is the point and the thing the nutjobs are all missing

Tbf the council have probably (I am guessing here) done an OK job communicating it to residents but didn't realise every nut job, maga hat wearer and little englander was going to view it as a battle ground against the lizard overlords, imagine there are some underpaid and overworked comms staff at the council having a nightmare and more used to communicating when some road resurfacing is happening or the day for recycling has changed

You’d think it was their first day on the job

If it's anything like parking tickets which I think it is, the fine will be £70 and if you pay it within 2 weeks, you can pay a reduced fee of £35.
Rather than it being a £35 fine which increases. There's no real difference but that's probably where it's come from

Someone posted a Twitter link which has a map showing filters on main roads only. I’ll see if I can find it in a mo.

Camera on main roads would seem closest to existing bus gate infrastructure. If the suggestion is to install lots and lots of cameras to catch you driving in the wrong zone then I can kind of see where the big brother conspiracy theorists are coming from.

Sorry, it was a twitter link within the slate.com article that @gillies posted.

Especially between purple and red zones there seem to be numerous unfiltered small streets that cross the border.

I have lots of sympathy for overworked underpaid local authority staff, having been one until quite recently.

I still think they have made enormous errors in how they have communicated about this, and while they couldn't have known they would become the epicenter of a bizarre conspiracy theory, they absolutely should have expected a tonne of pushback including lies and disinformation.

As others said at the beginning of this thread, the way to do this would have been a much simpler scheme, one road at a time, with a minimum of fuss, not trying to sell it as a grand urbanist plan.

Especially between purple and red zones

Those roads have been LTNed as part of separate schemes.

lots and lots of cameras to catch you driving in the wrong zone

There's no such thing as being in the wrong zone. The cameras discourage you from driving between zones without using the ring road.

The proposed Cambridge scheme is a simple £5 charge to drive in the city, no discount for residents. We live 50 yards outside the proposed edge of the scheme so could drive away from town for free and obviously we fixie skiddd it if we want to cover the 2 miles into town so it’s all dandy for us. Our neighbours will have to pay to drive anywhere, even just for the few yards from their drives away from town. Sucks to be them.

It’s silly tho. £5 a day / £100 a month is nothing like enough to get the private school runners out of their Volvo SUVs or big pharma spods out of their Teslas. £70 is much more like it. They’d park and ride it then, the fucks.

For more examples of terrible communication, see here where the cabinet member for transport is expressly making the link between 15 minute cities and the traffic filters:

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23073992.traffic-filters-will-divide-city-15-minute-neighbourhoods/

The (good) FAQ, at a guess produced after they hired some new comms people, then tries desperately to row back from this link. But of course then they look like they're lying.

Those roads have been LTNed as part of separate schemes.

Got you.

I thought it was either going to take an awful lot of cameras to enforce or push drivers into these smaller roads as they tried to avoid the filters but I can see the infrastructure is already in place which means that’s not an issue.

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Or they can start parking infront of your place instead of in their drive way?!

It’s been suggested. A lot.

Wish I'd never read this. How people can prioritize cars over people and safe spaces blows my mind.

It’s easy - other people aren’t them or their family, and literally every single thing they have done that hasn’t been utter drudgery has been facilitated by a car.

Until the planning folks grok this, and realise that any attack on cars is a perceived attack on freedom, attempts at meaningful change will be met with such fierce resistance.

Our neighbours will have to pay to drive anywhere, even just for the few yards from their drives away from town. Sucks to be them.

Colleagues of mine would need to pay to leave their homes and leave Cambridge.

Maybe this is what needs to be done - but you have to be pretty far down the progressive scale to credit the designers with a brain.

I believe - although it's obviously highly possible I'm wrong - that the idea was first attributed to Jan Gehl, the Danish architect and urban planner. Certainly it's one of the first ideas I came across in architecture school, and at it's core is the idea that we should be designing and making spaces that are accessible, sustainable, that we want to spend time in, and that most of the stuff we need is within x number of minutes travel.

https://www.archdaily.com/801431/jan-gehl-5-rules-for-designing-great-cities

https://www.pps.org/article/jgehl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_x5Hor2MP8

As a non-resident Cambridge worker, who uses public transport and a Brompton to get to and from the office, I love baiting my colleagues on the proposed scheme. Most get it, but some just react with barely contained fury at just the mention of it.

https://twitter.com/perry_jims/status/1627597500264620032

Ah but they can walk home from the junction into a summer sunrise at 5am. Let’s see you get a train home at that time.

Maybe it's just me getting old but I actually feel depressed and completely powerless seeing this misinformation campaign spread so easily because this is one of those things I've been very passionate about for ages and it's very close to my heart. When you start feeling that things are slowly progressing, the insane conservative grifters take it hostage and within a week there is insane pushback and it turns into a culture war issue. This is why I don't really care about anything anymore, it's just so mentally exhausting to even deal with all the conversative lunacy of the past few years let alone actively trying to change things.

Have made the error, despite never having an account, of getting into a habit of looking at twitter lately, it's exhausting. It's best to go out into the real world and go for a ride and it seems far more normal. Despite the noise (and it is noise, astroturfing, conspiracy, etc.) on twatter and this being dragged into the latest culture war, look around and change is happening.

Take the many city landmarks like the Strand that is now partly pedestrianised, upgrades are happening on the Bank closures, consultations are open on pedestrianising some of St Pauls gyratory, pretty sure Waterloo roundabout was due a change to be people friendly, etc. There are even consultation to improve some of K&C on the embankment.