Westgate Car Parks

That car park itself is disgusting but it is damnably convenient. That's the part that hurts the most. It is the best place for me to park to go out and about in Oxford but it is awful.


I won't go in it alone at night if I can avoid it.


But it is where you need to park to go out in the middle of Oxford and is positioned in the best place for me to walk to everywhere from.


Maybe as they charge £2.50 for the first hour or so they could consider taking their MASSIVE profits and cleaning it up a bit maybe wash it once a year or something with a power washer.


However all that aside, location is perfectly ideal.

AVOID.
This is THE most gross car park i have ever been too.


With 3 kids, we dont find it convenient to do park + ride,so this is generally the carpark we end up going to.
We carry the toddler so she cant touch anything. It reeks of wee. It is SO dirty and disgusting i have to hold my breathe and i wont touch the doors! i actually take tissue to touch them with.
And the amount i have harrased by beggars at the pay machine i count even count!


I have called the council and spoken to a chap about it. I was told at one point there was talk/prposals of a developement (whic has now been put on hold) so that is part of the reason they havent spent alot of money doing it up.


Fingers crossed someone will pull their finger out and do something.
yuk


The 1 star is cos it's close to the shops!

Although Westgate car park isn't very appealing, as it quite dirty and damp. It is the best place to park if you are going to the City Centre. The car park leads out to the Westgate shopping centre which is full of great shops all under on roof, so you can stay dry in the rain. It is a good location to park if you are going out in the evening as rates drop off at around 7.00pm I think, its a fixed rate after then.
It is very expensive during the day time though, an hour being £2 at the moment, I normally only stay for an hour so the rates are so expensive after that. There is normally no problems with finding a space, however it does get a bit busy very close to Christmas.

If I could give it no stars, I would.
Hundreds of visitors to Oxford each day either park in or walk by this monstrosity on their way to visit the city center. It is, after all, the main car park for central Oxford, and it's one of the first buildings that coachloads of tourists see as they walk towards town from where their coaches are parked.
Unfortunately, there is not a clean surface on the entire building, as it is covered with grime, damp, moss, and piss. The stairwells smell of a mix of wee and strange industrial cleaners, and urine stains are visible throughout.
If you take the pedestrian bridge across to the Westgate Center, you are greeted by strange dripping liquid across the opening and given the state of the car park, the visitor's mind no doubt imagines this to be urine. The pedestrian bridge is further decorated with broken windows which have never been repaired, and a handicap access ramp which has been closed off due to perpetual stream of wee and thick coat of grime.
This place is a disgrace and desperately needs to be cleaned up. I imagine that the council has been putting it off, as there were plans to demolish it and develop a much larger Westgate Center with a John Lewis and new parking. However, those plans have been put on hold indefinitely, so the car park will no doubt continue to welcome visitors to Oxford with its unique stench.
Update: I wrote the initial review 3 years ago, but nothing has changed. The car park still stinks, and they charge a fortune to park here.

The Westgate car park is excellent for the sole reason that it is very convenient for travel into the city centre. Quite difficult to access, it is worth looking at a map before you set off so you know where to go. The carpark itself is quite dingy and a bit expensive, but it beats parking half a mile outside the city centre and walking in the rain!

I wanted to give this car park zero stars but am required to give it a least one by Qype.
As a treat for my wife on her birthday (Saturday), we visited the Oxford Museum of Modern Art to see the Howard Hodgkin exhibition. As she had recently injured her knee we decided that, instead of using the Park and Ride, we'd park at Westgate which is just a short hobble from MOMA. I checked online to see how much this would cost and discovered that three to four hours parking was £6 - not cheap, but not bad. We parked at street level and exited the car park without seeing any signs relating to charges. However, when we returned (3 hours and 50 minutes later) we discovered that, as it was a Saturday, the charge had increased to £9.50! If we had been just ten minutes later it would have risen to £14.50! A perfect example of rip-off Britain. We had to agree with the couple in front of us at the ticket machine who, as they paid their fee, declared that this would be the last time they visited Oxford. Talk about leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Reducing congestion is, of course, important, but these measures don't accomplish that - all they do is to make city centre parking a practicality for the wealthy. But then maybe that's the point.