For the past two years, a pristine park-and-ride has sat in the verdant fields outside Eynsham in Oxfordshire, complete with 850 spaces and seven bus stops – but no way in or out.
The £32 million car park off the A40 was completed by council workers in January 2024, but the only thing currently filling its spaces is leftover fence equipment.
Where roads should connect with the neighbouring village and A-road, they instead lie unfinished and gravelly, leading only to patchy grass and thickets.
According to Oxfordshire County Council, the facility was originally intended to be delivered alongside improvements to the A40.
But with budgets stretched thanks to the high inflation of late 2022, the local authority decided it would be sensible to switch to a staggered approach.
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Instead of delaying the project altogether, councillors chose to go ahead with the construction of the park and ride as it had money ring-fenced in the budget.
The connections will eventually be completed – but that’s not expected until 2027, at which point the tarmac will have been untouched for more than three years.
A spokesperson for the council said: ‘The Eynsham park and ride site will be a wonderful asset once it is in operation, giving people more travel choices on a very busy route between Oxford and Witney.
‘Construction and landscaping is complete, but the site can’t start operating until the connection to the A40 is in place.
‘The first phase of the separate A40 improvements scheme will provide the connection needed to enable the park and ride to be used by early 2027, subject to planning.’
Funding for the road links – alongside new bus lanes and improved travel infrastructure – has now been secured from Homes England, they said.
The £32 million for the car park came from £51 million allocated to a wider Science Transit scheme which aims to help smooth journeys around the area’s many research facilities.
It has been funded from a variety of sources.
Oxfordshire County Council claims the park-and-ride will be worth the wait once it’s operational, with cuts of up to a third of peak traffic travelling in each direction on that section of the A40.
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