Oxford Street pedestrianization us coming to London

Oxford Circus pedestrian crossing, Oxford Street and Regent Street, Westminster, London.  The street is also famous for its all-angle crosswalk.

I started this entry in 2018, when after Sadiq Khan became mayor of London in 2016, it was announced that Oxford Street, one of the main shopping streets in London, was finally going to move to pedestrianization ("London’s Oxford Street to be pedestrianised by the end of 2018 under plans by Mayor Sadiq Khan," CITYam). 

More recently, this has been an issue because of how new Crossrail stations there will further add to the number of people in the area on foot.

Oxford Street attracts more than 500,000 visitors each day, and while taxis make up around a third of the traffic on the street, they account for two per cent of trips, with most people opting to walk or use the Tube.

Making this a reality took a change in national law.  London (like Montreal) is a city of boroughs.  While the Mayor of the city overall, particularly in London, has a limited set of duties, but a major one, public transit, this authority doesn't extend to most roadways.  At that scale the borough calls the shots, and Westminster Borough said no (" This article is more than 9 months old Banning cars in city centres has worked around the world. Why isn’t London’s Oxford Street pedestrianised yet?," Guardian).

But it required action by the national government to do so.  From "Oxford Street transformation – the state of play as 2026 gets underway":

On 17 September 2024, he revealed that the then brand new Labour government was backing his desire to bring “the nation’s high street” under his command.

This would not only entail putting Transport for London in charge of the highway itself, but also setting up a Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) to annexe some of the area around it too. Control of that area would therefore be removed from Westminster City Council which, in May 2022, had become Labour-run for the first time in its history.

Business opposition at the outset reversed.  Initially businesses were against ("Oxford Street businesses are up in arms over the road’s planned pedestrianisation," CITYam).  But now, with the reduction in footfall from WFH post-covid and a decline in London nightlife, retailers are on board ("London mayor gives green light for pedestrianised Oxford Street," "Khan: Crossrail’s Bond Street station can revitalise “tired” parts of Oxford Street," CITYam, "In Detail: What is the future for London's Oxford Street?," The Industry Fashion).

Green light.  But today, the project is finally going forward ("Oxford Street pedestrianisation plans approved," BBC). 

World class cities give, not just take:  London "gives permission" to pedestrianize major streets.  I have a line that world class cities through their adoption of innovation, show how other places can act similarly.

The congestion charge in London is one, even though it wasn't the first.  It took a long time, but NYC was finally able to launch a similar program, to great success ("New York's Congestion Pricing Is Working. Five Charts Show How," Bloomberg).  

Large scale bike share by Paris is another.  Again, they weren't the first, but they were the first in terms of large scale deployment therefore generating large scale rather than low scale impact ("Vélib' - A Success Story on Bike-Sharing in Paris," Citibike). 

While cities like Washington later moved similarly, NYC's adoption of bike share at a wider scale is again an example for North American cities, along with Montreal, the first city adopting the Paris model on the continent ("S.F. moving to catch up with European bike-share programs," San Francisco Chronicle).

Paris is also a leader in pedestrianizing streets, more so than London, although London has a number of projects that pedestrianize streets in neighborhoods ("Low-traffic neighbourhoods reduce pollution in surrounding streets," Imperial College, "London could get 30 more Low Traffic Neighbourhoods," TimeOut) and by schools (School Streets Initiative).  

The low traffic neighborhood initiative has had push back by the motor lobby, and the then Conservative Government thought it would be a winning campaign issue in the last election ("Residents hate them … so why do officials keep making more LTNs?," "Low-traffic neighbourhoods ‘have little local support’," London Times).   It wasn't ("Labour is right about LTNs – the Tories need to learn the same lesson." Guardian). 

Low traffic neighborhood in Hackney.

What differentiates Paris is moving towards doing this at a subdistrict scale where instead of one street, multiple streets are changed simultaneously.

Conclusion.  In short, cities need to double down on those elements that differentiate cities from suburbs, and attract new residents and commerce.  As I wrote wrt pedestrianization, start with one block and build from there ("A point about pedestrianizing streets: Boulder; Alexandria, Virginia, Cleveland Park, DC").