Oxford tourists told to walk single file as pavements clog up
OXFORD’S summer tourists make life a nuisance for locals, a city councillor has said, but she has an imaginative solution.
Visitors should be told to walk in single file to stop them blocking the pavements, according to former lord mayor Mary Clarkson.
Her idea aims to ease congestion caused by coach loads of sightseers who are dropped off in the centre of the city, which she says is creating a hazardous situation for other pedestrians.
She said summer tourists turned the city into “hell” and made paths dangerous for cyclists and walkers.
“It doesn’t ruin the tourist experience if you walk single file or just two abreast,” she said, adding that she was “complaining about the management of huge numbers of tourist groups, not tourists per se”.
“Oxford is pretty much impossible between Juneoctober. Cycle lanes all full of illegally parked tourist coaches and pavements blocked,” Ms Clarkson said on Twitter. “At least we try to be considerate to visitors when we go to busy places and avoid behaviour which we hate in Oxford’s tourists.”
Ms Clarkson added that one of the major problems was language schools that used the name of the university city to attract students, who blocked pavements when queuing for buses.
“If the schools just told their charges to walk single file it would transform life for us locals,” she said.
Last week, Ms Clarkson told Mailonline: “Better coach parking arrangements, advising groups to walk in single file or no more than two abreast and ensuring that tour guides don’t block entrances to places like the Covered Market when talking to groups would make life so much better for other people.”
Ms Clarkson is a Labour representative for the Marston ward.
She originally spoke out about tourists as she compared the city to Edinburgh, saying that despite thousands descending on the city for its summer fringe festival, many Oxford residents escaped there for a “brief respite”.
Seven million people visit Oxford every year, generating £780million of revenue.
Ms Clarkson is just the latest resident to bemoan the impact of the tourists.
Last month a senior priest at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin criticised visitors who only entered the medieval church, which is England’s most-visited, to take photographs.
The Rev Charlotte Bannister-parker wrote in a newsletter: “I am not usually a grumpy person, but I have been overwhelmed by the numbers of tourists coming through the church and the fact that so many of them seem unaware that this is a sacred space.
“Not only is the whole experience of visiting St Mary’s so often seen through a camera lens, but also some visitors seem completely unaware of the difference between this space as ‘the House of God’ and, say, that of the Sheldonian [theatre].”
A wave of anti-tourist sentiment has swept across Europe with residents of cities including Venice and Madrid, as well as the Isle of Skye, speaking out against disruptive visitors.