The Coalition for Healthy Streets and Active Travel (CoHSAT) is a group of 25 voluntary and campaigning organisations working across Oxfordshire to create attractive, accessible and people-friendly streets. We do this by encouraging efficient active, low carbon and sustainable travel, which will reduce traffic, air pollution and noise, and enable healthy and thriving communities.
With elections to Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) on 1st May 2025, we summarise in this Manifesto our views on a positive future for places and transport in Oxfordshire, and ask parties and candidates to support it. We will be asking them where they stand on these issues.
Notes:
Active travel: walking, wheeling and cycling should be prioritised for its inclusivity (physical and financial), health, community and environmental benefits. Investment should develop continuous, attractive and safe networks, so that walking, wheeling or cycling is a practical and safe option for everyone who wants to.
Public transport should be accessible across the county, frequent, reliable and well-integrated between operators and with other modes of transport. In towns, this requires prioritisation of space, in rural areas some services may require support to make them viable. The potential is universal, affordable service where people can use time productively instead of being ‘stuck behind the wheel’.
Escalating traffic levels cause multiple harms to people, some short-term and visible like traffic jams and injuries from collisions, some less visible like toxic pollutants, climate damage and inequitable use of space. We need to retain the benefits of motor transport for those who most need it, but reduce its harms to people.
No one should die or be seriously injured for the sake of someone else’s mobility. The Council should continue its commitment to ‘Vision Zero’, reducing road deaths and serious injuries towards zero by applying the internationally proven ‘Safe System’ approach, working with partners.
From February to March 2025, independent specialist Mutual Gain facilitated a Citizens’ Assembly on Transport in Oxfordshire. 34 citizens, representative of the population of Oxfordshire, with input from experts and local businesses and residents, with access to information, and most importantly with time to discuss among themselves the implications of different actions or inaction.
They emerged with 20 recommendations, all supported by 70% of the Assembly and 16 supported by 80% of the Assembly members. These spanned improving public transport and active travel routes, creating a ‘car-free city centre’ to make it more attractive to visitors, and using an expanded Zero Emissions Zone, a Workplace Parking Levy and possibly a future Congestion Charge to restrict private car traffic and fund improvements. They also recommended a public communications programme covering both ‘operational’ communication and explaining the need for and benefits of the changes that they were proposing.
An outline description of the Assembly and its Recommendations has been published, and the full report will follow after the election.
CoHSAT broadly supports adoption of the Citizens’ Assembly’s Recommendations.
Download Cohsat Manifesto 2025 as a PDF file