Banbury - Transport and Infrastructure

Transport and Infrastructure

The Oxford Canal is a popular place for pleasure trips and tourist activity. The canal's main boat yard is now the listed site Tooley's Boatyard.

Banbury has rail services run by Chiltern Railways to Warwick and Birmingham, both running to London Marylebone via the non-electrified Chiltern Main Line. It also has services run by First Great Western to Oxford, Reading and London Paddington. Services to other parts of the country are provided by CrossCountry via Birmingham New Street, to Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, Gloucester, Leicester, Stansted, as well as direct services to other cities across England and Scotland.

Banbury has an intra-urban bus service provided by Stagecoach Group which feeds the outlying villages and provides transport to places such as Oxford, Chipping Norton and Brackley. Geoff Amos Coaches runs an intra-urban bus to Rugby and Daventry. Heyfordian operates smaller services not covered by those of Stagecoach including routes from Banbury to places including Bicester, the Heyfords, Ardley, Towcester, Wappenham and Northampton. A local operator – Tex Coaches also runs regular routes from Banbury Town Centre to Brackley via Kings Sutton and Greatworth. Banbury is also served by the National Express coach service which runs regular services in and out of Banbury, to and from major UK towns and cities.

Hennef Way (A422) was upgraded to a dual carriageway easing traffic on the heavily congested road and providing north Banbury and the town centre with higher-capacity links to the M40.

In 2005 Oxfordshire County Council proposed building a ring road around Banbury, connecting the M40 to the Oxford Road at Bodicote, to ease town centre traffic. However this is not expected to be built until 2016 at the earliest.