James Ford: Cars are hardly Oxford Street’s biggest problem, so why does the Mayor insist on pretending they are?
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
James Ford is a columnist for City AM and a former adviser on transport policy to Boris Johnson when Mayor of London.
The Mayor of London has decided that he – and only he – can fix Oxford Street. That is why he has created the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) to run the nation’s high street as a Mayoral Development Corporation. Given that no Mayor of London ever turns down extra powers and every occupant of City Hall since the post was established in 2000 has claimed that they wanted to pedestrianise Oxford Street but failed to do so, City Hall’s decision to seize control of the thoroughfare should have surprised no one.
Unfortunately for Londoners and retailers, Sadiq Khan’s pitch for power over the West End is inherently flawed. Pedestrianising Oxford Street will not solve the area’s issues. Cars, dear reader, are not really Oxford Street’s biggest problem. Far from it. Even before City Hall started rolling the pitch for the OSDC, ordinary motorists could not drive along Oxford Street between 7am and 7pm from Monday til Saturday. In fact, that has been the case since the 1970s. We must, therefore, acknowledge that, if Oxford Street has a traffic problem, then that problem is really about the number of buses traversing the thoroughfare rather than the number of cars.
According to a 2017 study by London TravelWatch: “If Oxford Street was a bus depot, it would be the largest in Europe.” Whilst a long-standing driver of congestion and traffic delays along Oxford Street, bus numbers have been falling under the mayoralties of both Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Since 2010, the number of buses traversing Oxford Street per hour have dropped from 300 to around 70. Although 16 different bus routes (and 200,000 bus passengers per day) still travel down the thoroughfare, this is a vast reduction from when Johnson described the street as being “bisected by a panting wall of red metal” in 2008.
Of course, the mayor will not admit that buses are the problem. Why? Because, as Chair of Transport for London, he is responsible for the number of buses that use Oxford Street and already has the power to redirect or reroute them. He could have done this without the creation of the OSDC. However, that would undermine the case for more powers.
Pedestrianising Oxford Street will banish buses to adjacent streets (inconveniencing passengers and residents like), but will that be enough to solve the West End’s real woes? Of course not. The mayor will not want to admit it, but crime is far more of a concern to the businesses and shoppers of the West End than buses. I have written elsewhere about Sadiq Khan’s desperate attempts to gaslight Londoners about the crime rate through the selective use of certain crime statistics, but the West End in particular has a …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
James Ford is a columnist for City AM and a former adviser on transport policy to Boris Johnson when Mayor of London.
The Mayor of London has decided that he – and only he – can fix Oxford Street. That is why he has created the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) to run the nation’s high street as a Mayoral Development Corporation. Given that no Mayor of London ever turns down extra powers and every occupant of City Hall since the post was established in 2000 has claimed that they wanted to pedestrianise Oxford Street but failed to do so, City Hall’s decision to seize control of the thoroughfare should have surprised no one.
Unfortunately for Londoners and retailers, Sadiq Khan’s pitch for power over the West End is inherently flawed. Pedestrianising Oxford Street will not solve the area’s issues. Cars, dear reader, are not really Oxford Street’s biggest problem. Far from it. Even before City Hall started rolling the pitch for the OSDC, ordinary motorists could not drive along Oxford Street between 7am and 7pm from Monday til Saturday. In fact, that has been the case since the 1970s. We must, therefore, acknowledge that, if Oxford Street has a traffic problem, then that problem is really about the number of buses traversing the thoroughfare rather than the number of cars.
According to a 2017 study by London TravelWatch: “If Oxford Street was a bus depot, it would be the largest in Europe.” Whilst a long-standing driver of congestion and traffic delays along Oxford Street, bus numbers have been falling under the mayoralties of both Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Since 2010, the number of buses traversing Oxford Street per hour have dropped from 300 to around 70. Although 16 different bus routes (and 200,000 bus passengers per day) still travel down the thoroughfare, this is a vast reduction from when Johnson described the street as being “bisected by a panting wall of red metal” in 2008.
Of course, the mayor will not admit that buses are the problem. Why? Because, as Chair of Transport for London, he is responsible for the number of buses that use Oxford Street and already has the power to redirect or reroute them. He could have done this without the creation of the OSDC. However, that would undermine the case for more powers.
Pedestrianising Oxford Street will banish buses to adjacent streets (inconveniencing passengers and residents like), but will that be enough to solve the West End’s real woes? Of course not. The mayor will not want to admit it, but crime is far more of a concern to the businesses and shoppers of the West End than buses. I have written elsewhere about Sadiq Khan’s desperate attempts to gaslight Londoners about the crime rate through the selective use of certain crime statistics, but the West End in particular has a …
James Ford: Cars are hardly Oxford Street’s biggest problem, so why does the Mayor insist on pretending they are?
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
James Ford is a columnist for City AM and a former adviser on transport policy to Boris Johnson when Mayor of London.
The Mayor of London has decided that he – and only he – can fix Oxford Street. That is why he has created the Oxford Street Development Corporation (OSDC) to run the nation’s high street as a Mayoral Development Corporation. Given that no Mayor of London ever turns down extra powers and every occupant of City Hall since the post was established in 2000 has claimed that they wanted to pedestrianise Oxford Street but failed to do so, City Hall’s decision to seize control of the thoroughfare should have surprised no one.
Unfortunately for Londoners and retailers, Sadiq Khan’s pitch for power over the West End is inherently flawed. Pedestrianising Oxford Street will not solve the area’s issues. Cars, dear reader, are not really Oxford Street’s biggest problem. Far from it. Even before City Hall started rolling the pitch for the OSDC, ordinary motorists could not drive along Oxford Street between 7am and 7pm from Monday til Saturday. In fact, that has been the case since the 1970s. We must, therefore, acknowledge that, if Oxford Street has a traffic problem, then that problem is really about the number of buses traversing the thoroughfare rather than the number of cars.
According to a 2017 study by London TravelWatch: “If Oxford Street was a bus depot, it would be the largest in Europe.” Whilst a long-standing driver of congestion and traffic delays along Oxford Street, bus numbers have been falling under the mayoralties of both Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan. Since 2010, the number of buses traversing Oxford Street per hour have dropped from 300 to around 70. Although 16 different bus routes (and 200,000 bus passengers per day) still travel down the thoroughfare, this is a vast reduction from when Johnson described the street as being “bisected by a panting wall of red metal” in 2008.
Of course, the mayor will not admit that buses are the problem. Why? Because, as Chair of Transport for London, he is responsible for the number of buses that use Oxford Street and already has the power to redirect or reroute them. He could have done this without the creation of the OSDC. However, that would undermine the case for more powers.
Pedestrianising Oxford Street will banish buses to adjacent streets (inconveniencing passengers and residents like), but will that be enough to solve the West End’s real woes? Of course not. The mayor will not want to admit it, but crime is far more of a concern to the businesses and shoppers of the West End than buses. I have written elsewhere about Sadiq Khan’s desperate attempts to gaslight Londoners about the crime rate through the selective use of certain crime statistics, but the West End in particular has a …
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