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Everyone hates Oxford Street. Will pedestrianisation save it?
In a few days the busiest shopping street in Europe will be closed to traffic. The hope is that an unloved and polluted thoroughfare will turn into somewhere that people actually want to spend time [Guardian Long Read]
posted by ellieBOA on Oct 22, 2026 at 6:13 AM
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I quite liked the idea of making it a place where you could bring your picnic lunch - or work snack - and eat it. My recollection of Oxford Street is that it serves as a sort of conduit for buses, tourist crowds and generally experiences that are best avoided. The surrounding streets, by contrast, were more pleasant places to walk around. I hope that re-diversion of buses and taxis does not spoil those areas.
posted by rongorongo at 6:49 AM
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I hope that re-diversion of buses and taxis does not spoil those areas.
There are always byproducts and externalities to change. But just like Braess's Paradox the inverse would also likely be true. By removing more car thoroughfares you could reduce traffic overall.
posted by robot_jesus at 6:57 AM
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An actual pedestrianisation removing all vehicles. Disappointing about the lack of adjustments for people with disabilities forcing additional travel to and from bus stops . The use of unsafe floating bus stops has already been exclusionary and removed safe access for many . Is there a link to the Equality and Access statements , i am guessing they will be the usual case where it is great for seven out of nine protected groups and the other two ( elderly and disabled ) can suck it as they are outnumbered .
Let us see if they hold true to walkers/wheelers only and actually enforce it. Also good to see something other than the "Dutch model" held up as models for public infrastructure in cities , places for people not vehicles.
posted by stuartmm at 7:12 AM
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stuartmm, I'm disabled and thought about that too, but it does say towards the end of the article that bus stops will be no more than 200m from Oxford Street.
posted by ellieBOA at 7:37 AM
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My first trip to London was in 1977. My first physical impression of London were diesel fumes. Walking on Oxford St was really heavy with diesel exhaust. When we got back where we were staying and back indoors, our clothes smelled like diesel. Other times in London diesel fumes were now in the background but still there. Cabs and buses. Electrify these stinking boxes.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:49 AM
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So you can look at the "Traffic-free Oxford Street" plans here.
You can see the plans for bus access here. It looks like the plan to that the 2 main day buses will go north from Marble Arch for 2 blocks, then run parallel with Oxford St along Wigmore St, until dropping back to run parallel one block north of Oxford St on Henrietta place. Then cutting back across Oxford St at Regent St. Night buses pretty similar.
The proposed bus routes came out of a consultation process which has a page concerning accessibility issues and the equality impact assessment they produced.
posted by biffa at 7:51 AM
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The reduced traffic should make Oxford calmer.
posted by SPrintF at 8:09 AM
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Studies of floating bus stop safety have not found increased risk or danger.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:10 AM
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Vaguely related:
Ulez led to better lung size and function among London children, study finds "Researchers find capacity stunted by pollution was restored after introduction of ultra-low emission zone"
posted by BungaDunga at 8:10 AM
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The only bit of Oxford Street I ever use - and then only to cross from Fitzrovia to Soho - is the tatty stretch running from Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road. Not sure whether that area will show any change or not.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:04 AM
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I've always used the parallel streets, dipping in to Oxford Street itself when I reached the bit I was trying to get to (John Lewis, M&S, etc). I probably still will, as it wasn't the traffic I was trying to avoid, but rather the people.
Looking out of the front of a bus as it drove down Oxford Street gave me an insight into what driving one must do to one's brain - the constant waves of people running out into the traffic, in front of the buses, to cross the road, and it seemed to me that one could only hope that one wouldn't run any of them over. If a bus stopped to let them cross, it would never get anywhere, so they just plough on. But it must be terrifying.
Didn't make me any less careless when it was my turn to cross, though. Maybe it's a human trait.
posted by Grangousier at 11:58 AM
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Urgh. Oxford St. No one goes there: it's too crowded.
I think it will rapidly become quite beloved. Once the Christmas lights are up and Selfridges have their windows in it will be gorgeous. And with the opportunities for music and street cafes in the summer it could be a truly nice place.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 1:15 PM
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Interesting article, thanks. I liked this bit:
The starting point was a little-known 1932 article in Good Housekeeping by Virginia Woolf. For Woolf, Oxford Street appeared as a "great rolling ribbon ... the pebbly bed of a river ... washed by a bright stream". She saw it as gaudy, but also sparkling, thrilling and overwhelming, defined by the restless movement of its messy public. (Her essay also shows us how weird the street has long been – in 1932, it was apparently full of hawkers selling live tortoises.)
I find myself slightly torn about the data collection by bench, "a "beacon", a sensor recessed into the seat, that will measure how many people sit down, for how long, and the ambient temperature at the time". In theory I'm all for more data and better-evidenced decision-making. In practice, I'm not sure I'd want my sitting down to be measured in this way.
I followed the link from the article to the article about US sweet shops on Oxford Street (why does the link as given in the Guardian have "AI overview" at the end of the URL?) which was also interesting, although I already knew from the man who repaired my washing machine that these shops are fronts for money-laundering.
posted by paduasoy at 1:15 PM
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Oxford St pavements are the only place I've encountered the pedestrian equivalent of a traffic jam.
posted by senor biggles at 2:49 PM
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2030 headline: "Oxford St tortoise trade target of police"
posted by pracowity at 11:00 PM
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So the response to a pedestrian jam is to 'add extra lanes to induce demand' for foot traffic? "Just one more lane, bruh" doesn't work for cars, I can see why shopping that relies on foot traffic wants more foot traffic.
Lockdown in 2020 allowed Manchester to pedestrianize portions of the Northern Quarter that were already low-traffic. This change gave outdoor seating space to bars and restaurants already there for a "café culture" hangout space, but Oxford Street isn't that, even if Soho's streets are right there and Soho Square itself is a patch of green.
I expect that this also intended to impact scooter-riding grab-and-run thievery, reducing the number of tourists affected by crime at this tourist destination. Pickpockets rejoice, I guess?
posted by k3ninho at 11:02 PM
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I like it. No matter what, London needs fewer cars and fewer car-dominated areas. This scheme, like any big scheme, will have problems, but they'll work them out.
posted by pracowity at 1:46 AM
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Used to work there as a foreign bike courier. No worse than any other built up commercial street. Kind of nice bakeries nearby.
posted by chmmr at 3:09 AM
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I remember hearing a talk from somebody at the Bartlett School of Architecture about "Space Syntax" - basically a mathematical analysis of buildings or cities which tracks and predicts how humans will interact with it. They measured the level of a street's "integration" by tracking the number of street to street transitions which are necessary to get from any one point to any other. Those segments of a street which require the fewest transitions to get to anywhere else are the most integrated - and hence have the highest footfall in everyday use. I believe the whole theory was evolved from a looking at Oxford Street -being straight, long and with many connections it glows white hot on any heat map of places that people are likely to congregate.
Given the Danish influence on the current pedestrianisation, it is interesting to compare with Strøget in Copenhagen - another straight thoroughfare which has become a centrepiece of the city after they cleared it of cars back in the 60s.
posted by rongorongo at 3:43 AM
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This is a little bit of a derail, but the sweet shops are tax evasion scams, not money laundering. Money laundering is best done with service based businesses where extra cash can easily be moved through by fake use of the service: car wash, nail salon, coffee shop, laundromat, massage parlor, etc. If you are buying and selling inventory, the inventory and orders can be audited.
The sweet shops work by finding young men about to leave the country and getting them to sign on as the president/director of the corporation running the shop. The shop does not pay business taxes or VAT to the government and when HMRC wakes up about six months after, they close the business, blame the now long gone director and open a new shop. In the same location, with the same inventory, but a slightly changed name.
You see stuff about money laundering, but there's no shady deals trying to slide money through in this system. They are businesses made profitable by avoiding any and all taxation.
posted by Hactar at 6:27 AM
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The shop does not pay business taxes or VAT to the government and when HMRC wakes up about six months after, they close the business, blame the now long gone director and open a new shop. In the same location, with the same inventory, but a slightly changed name.
What? Isn't the shop filled with merchandise than can be seized and auctioned off for missed taxes? And the locale would normally be held offline while the criminal/tax process is ongoing in most countries. Also the shop owner (not the space rental) would be held responsible for location taxes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:17 AM
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> the sweet shops are tax evasion scams, not money laundering
Yes, sorry, I do understand that the word of Westminster council on this is more reliable than what the man who repaired my washing machine said.
posted by paduasoy at 8:26 AM
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What? Isn't the shop filled with merchandise than can be seized and auctioned off for missed taxes?
For those wanting to know more, see the original expose by LondonCentric; and also the recent reporting by the Edinburgh Minute of similar dodgy shops on Princes Street, which were directly linked to London's. (I say "were" because the building shown on that page burned down this summer, disrupting traffic for months and so doing even more damage to the city.)
posted by rory at 10:20 AM
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I'm looking forward to visiting the pedestrianised street and seeing how it changes.
Ultimately I think this is being done because:
-- Rents are super high thanks to landlords like Criterion Capital who control a lot of "prime" properties and form rent-fixing cartels
-- but the street is so unpleasant that the big flagship stores aren't getting business commensurate with that sky-high rent. There are a bunch of big, old department store buildings standing empty, many of which are listed so they can't be knocked down but will be expensive to modernise.
-- and no one's willing to gamble on opening a new shop except the business tax dodgers: candy shops, tourist souvenirs, and knockoff Harry Potter "magic" shops. See rory's London Centric link above.
There's a revived HMV shop (music, blu-ray, games) which I hope does well... and the new, official Harry Potter store, which I hope sinks without trace. Like a certain yacht.
Pedestrianisation also opens up possibilities for restaurants. No one would think of eating a sit-down meal on Oxford Street-- too crowded, noisy, dirty and dangerous. Taking away traffic will at least reduce noise and pollution, though it remains to be seen whether they can make the street genuinely unmiserable.
Two long term problems:
-- Oxford Street has always had Hogarthian levels of antisocial behaviour and petty crime. A lot of this is organised, and it isn't going to end without the sort of large-scale coordinated effort that police, local councils and community organisations no longer really have the resources to do.
-- Shopping is no longer an activity for leisure and pleasure. People no longer have the spare cash, energy or time. Going shopping with your friends is just not a thing like it used to be. It would be ironic if the street most devoted to capitalism died because of the effect of extractive capitalism on society, but, well, here we are.
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:28 PM
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