Transport

At Oxford Brookes University, we encourage our students, staff and visitors to travel to campus in as sustainable a manner as possible, recognising that there are lots of factors that influence how we travel.

We have limited car parking at Oxford Brookes, with the number of spaces reducing significantly as we consolidate our Wheatley and Harcourt Hill campuses to Headington, as part of our Oxford Campus Vision.

To ensure we proactively and effectively manage access to car parking as spaces continue to reduce, we implemented a new car park management strategy in September 2024. This introduced eligibility criteria for a permit and increased daily parking charges to better align with public transport costs, and particularly park and ride.

Since the new strategy was introduced, staff and students travelling to campus by car alone has reduced by around 45%, resulting in a 30% saving on our scope 3 carbon emissions from commuting.

Brookes bus

Our Travel Plan

In summer 2024, our Travel Strategy and Travel Plan were approved, which set out our ambitions to reduce carbon emissions from staff and student travel. 

The key drivers of this plan are to:

  • maintain our reputation as a sustainable organisation
  • maintain legislative, regulatory, national, regional and local policy compliance
  • maximise the accessibility of staff, students and visitors to sustainable forms of travel
  • support our ambitions to become a net zero organisation by 2040
  • support student and staff recruitment and retention.

We set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions (CO2e) from commuting by 60% by 2028/29, against a 2022 baseline.

Brookes bus

Staff and Student Travel Patterns

We regularly seek feedback from our students and staff on their travel patterns and what the University might do to support them to walk, cycle, use public transport or car share. The surveys also help us to track progress towards our environmental targets.

In December 2024, we completed our latest staff and student travel survey. A comparison with 2022 shows around a 45% reduction in staff and students travelling to campus by car alone, primarily as a result of the introduction of our new car park management strategy.

This has resulted in a 30% saving on carbon emissions from commuting, against a target of 60% by 2028/29 on a 2022 baseline.

You can find out more by reading our summary of the findings.

For information about different travel options, offers and parking, please find on our Travel Pages.

Students pushing bikes across a field