Sadiq Khan has been making an attempt to pedestrianise Oxford Road since he first turned the mayor of London in 2016. On Monday, after quite a few setbacks, his plan will lastly come to fruition. The busiest stretch of the nation’s well-known purchasing road can be closed to site visitors in a scheme designed to enhance the world and make it extra enticing to pedestrians. It ought to be an emblematic case research in making cities greener, much less congested, extra inviting locations to stay and go to.
The Larger London Authority hopes it would rejuvenate a excessive road fallen on exhausting occasions. Because the pandemic, the variety of vacant outlets on Oxford Road has greater than quadrupled. It estimates that the scheme will generate £82m of worth a 12 months within the space by rising footfall and inspiring guests to linger. This affect stays to be seen, however analysis from different cities means that outlets expertise larger gross sales as soon as an space is pedestrianised. Given the prime minister’s give attention to rejuvenating British excessive streets, whose dilapidation is correlated with help for Reform UK, he ought to be watching with curiosity.
The advantages of pedestrianisation are far higher than elevated purchasing. Home transport stays the most important contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions in Britain. This sector’s emissions have fallen extra slowly than others largely as a result of too many individuals nonetheless depend on automobiles. Mr Khan’s metropolis is an outlier: 59% of all journeys in Britain have been made by automotive in 2024, whereas in London automobiles accounted for 34%. That is hardly stunning when the Treasury spends twice as a lot on London’s transport system because it does on different areas in England, and the capital’s bus fares are cheaper. In Leeds, which has no mass-transit system, practically half of individuals drive to work. Automobile use can’t be lowered with out concurrently bettering public transport.
The critics of pedestrianisation – together with Westminster council – counsel it merely displaces site visitors elsewhere. However the proof on that is extra nuanced. One research from the College of the West of England suggests the closure of strategic roads causes some site visitors to vanish completely, as folks swap to public transport or stroll. Low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), the pedestrianisation schemes that have been rushed by way of within the capital throughout Covid-19 and have since been launched in Manchester and Birmingham, have been fiercely criticised for inflicting a buildup of highway site visitors elsewhere. But one research of 46 LTNs in London recommended their affect on site visitors elsewhere was minimal.
Automobile-free areas ought to be accompanied by different insurance policies that scale back air pollution on surrounding roads, such because the low-emissions zones launched in London and Oxford. Mr Khan was criticised by the then chief of the opposition, Keir Starmer, for the enlargement of Ulez in 2023, and likewise suffered racial abuse. He has since been vindicated by analysis from Imperial Faculty suggesting Ulez has considerably improved the well being of main college youngsters within the capital, whose lung progress had been stunted by air pollution.
That Transport for London estimates the pedestrianisation of Oxford Road could have solely a minimal affect on nitrogen dioxide emissions, which have been already lowering on account of Ulez, is testimony to the coverage’s success. In 2014, Oxford Road had the best focus of nitrogen dioxide air pollution on the earth. Its pedestrianisation ought to be an inspiration to different cities to embrace insurance policies that work for folks, not automobiles.