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Wheels of fortune: a pedestrianised Oxford Street would be a lifeless one

A bus-free Oxford St is an idea without legs

Andrew Gilligan
10.03.08

When I hear the word " consensus", I reach for the green ink. Nothing, repeat nothing, is more dangerous than a policy on which all parties agree; and there's a particularly pernicious example in the current Mayoral campaign.

The closure of Oxford Street, and its replacement by a tram, may well seem an improvement on the buschoked mess we have now. It may sound modern, green and Londonerfriendly. And it's always good for a clap at any Mayoral hustings.

But if any of the candidates stopped to think for 20 seconds, they would realise that pedestrianising Oxford Street is unworkable. As non-starters go, it is up there with a British Leyland-era Austin Allegro left out in the rain since 1981.

Even as I write the dreaded P-word, I can see those architect's drawings with their little blobby trees, happy stick-people and humming light-rail vehicles, employed on so many false London prospectuses over the years. The Millennium Dome! The Thames Gateway! Tower-block estates!

The problem, of course, is that Oxford Street's closure would devastate the bus service in central London. It's the main east-west artery for buses, with 18 routes. If it were replaced by a tram, everyone making an east-west bus journey would have to change twice.

And where would the trams and buses turn around? To create a tram-bus interchange at the Tottenham Court Road end, you'd need to knock down some buildings. To have one at the Marble Arch end, you'd need to put it in the park.

A little noticed feature of Ken's pedestrianisation scheme is to fund the tram by putting what he calls "two new commercial buildings, they could be another Selfridges or a modern office block" at the Marble Arch end. That's a bit more of the park gone, then. A decimated bus service, a decimated Hyde Park - what could be greener?

Pedestrianisation is often horrible anyway. Pedestrianised streets die when the shops close. They're yob magnets. They're suburban; they're provincial. Paving this street would symbolise the pasteurisation of central London, our rulers' desire to remove the mess and the noise and the life.

That's not to say that modern Oxford Street isn't horrible too, particularly if you're on a bus taking 30 minutes to travel it. This, however, is a problem entirely of TfL's own making. The buses on Oxford Street used to run more freely because they were Routemasters, and they were often half the length.

There were fewer of them, too. In the 1990s, long routes, such as the 8 and 10, were split, with the two halves overlapping in Oxford Street. Reunite those routes; scrap the bendies; put taxis on the parallel streets, where that option exists at the western end. Not sexy, perhaps, but the only workable option.

For all the supposedly vicious nature of the current Mayoral election, Oxford Street symbolises the campaign's essential fluffiness. What the candidates agree on makes a rather longer list than what they disagree on. Time, perhaps, for a bit more disagreement - and Oxonian intellectual rigour.

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Oxford St is London's embarrassment. The wall of bus engine noise and diesel pollution is vile. For my shopping needs I use only the back entrances.
Revamp it now! Let's adopt a 'can do' approach in London. The current bus routes can turn around both ends with little change. It is what happens now at busy times anyway. Forget the tram: hop-on-electric buses can link east - west bus routes. They would be introduced next week if I was running the joint.
Pedestrianised yobbery can be designed out; only in Britain are such places designed �in� as dysfunctional 'precincts'.
Below I offer 4 IDEAS that WORK WELL right now in cities around Europe:
1 Later night shopping.
2 REAL terrace pavement cafes/brazzeries/bars, lit up and strung all along the street, with table service and a 'customers sitting down only' rule the condition of the licence, open all night in turns.
3 FORGET Pubs and drinking BARNS which ruin Britain. They exist by making money selling booze to drunks, AND they can't be bothered to provide simple, nice food (which we crave at night). Furthermore,they DISCRIMINATE against families.
4 Put children's swings in the street ( it�s done abroad).
Londoners could come out in the evening with their kids and enjoy their city. Create night markets - a food market too.
THUS THE YOBS will stay away and Londoners will have a family friendly environment to enjoy

- Ivor, London, UK

Cutting across Oxford Street are also many North-South routes; if you get rid of these the detours would be massive and result in absolute gridlock. So higher congestion, and co2 - hmm, that's joined up thinking. If people want to shop without cars, why not go to Bluewater? As a local resident I don't want Oxford street paved over, these things work in pretty cities in sunnier climates, but London is a working city - please let us just get on with our jobs and lives without turning the city into a toy town for Ken's social experiments!
Andrew, thank you for fighting the battles others will not!

- Manav, London, UK

I live in Ealing, and can't forget the fuss and money (and chaos) in preparation for the tram along the Uxbridge road a few years ago (which nobody wanted expect the Mayor). Then all of sudden the Mayor drops it with hardly a word. Is he proposing the same destruction and chaos on Oxford Street?

People are meant to be encouraged to use buses for the sake of the environment, is closing Oxford St to buses and leaving them to the mercy of the clogged up roads around that area very fair?

Maybe they should plow money from new commercial buildings into improving the current (awful) transport scheme they already have, rather than adding more to that awful system.

- Celeste, London, UK