Oxford Street to be pedestrianised with traffic banned by Sadiq Khan

https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/oxford-street-pedestrianised-traffic-banned-29947251

Posted by alyaaz

20 Comments

  1. >The road between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch – 0.7 miles – will be covered by the plans announced today. More changes towards Tottenham Court Road could be planned in future.

    Now they just need to make all of Zone 1 pedestrianised

  2. Unless Westminster Council actually deals with the American Candy shops Oxford Street is pretty much over as a destination for shopping.

    Everyone I know generally goes to Westfields as it’s a much nicer place to shop.

  3. fartbox-enjoyer on

    Soho and the surrounds do need to be temporarily pedestrianised. It’s complete fucking carnage on Friday and Saturday nights again.

  4. I’m struggling to see any possible argument against this. For those who’ve been recently, Oxford Street has become an unpleasant place to walk down. It’s far too busy, noisy, and dirty and seemingly everyone I speak to hates it. Few more trees, more space, and a more relaxed atmosphere would be a massive improvement.

    Town centres across the country have been made significantly more pleasant and more popular shopping destinations through pedestrianisation and it’s genuinely shocking it’s taken so long to bring it to parts of Central London.

  5. TheAdequateKhali on

    The self-described “blade runners” will be furious about this. “It’s like Nazi Germany or something like that!”

  6. He’s going to be standing at the corner personally at Tottenham Court turning people around. Good guy, but you wonder if the mayor could be doing other things with his time.

  7. Am I the only one struggling to parse the title of this post? Is it a comma after the pedestrianised that’s missing?

  8. There have been proposals to do this for years, going back to long before Sadiq. Let’s see if it actually happens as planned this time.

  9. I’m not opposed to this, but Oxford street also has side roads off it, like, what happens to them? Some need cars to go down it to do deliveries. Then, removing cars from this street will just cause increase congestion in the surrounding area.

    This is a nice idea, but not very thought out, and the money it will cost could be put to much better use elsewhere.

  10. I would like this, however, there are challenges.

    Where do the busses go? Are cyclists banned too? How will that be enforced? What about elderly and disabled? I guess there is the back of John Lewis/ marble Arch but those roads will become seriously congested.

    Obviously out of hours, delivery vehicles need to get in.

    Personally I would leave it as is and just make it taxi and busses only for the entire shopping stretch. Busses are helpful to get around.

  11. I used to work on great marlborough street which is just behind Oxford Street and going out at lunchtime was so bad with the traffic.

    I remember some weekends they temporarily pedestrianised the street and it was great, if a little eerie.

    I think pedestrianising it would be good but tbh with the way retail is now I don’t think it would make a difference, but happy to be proven wrong!

  12. I wrote my A level geography assessment / dissertation on this exact scenario 16 years ago. I want some sort of recognition. Nothing major something like renaming it to sams street will be ok.