On the first day of a traffic-free Oxford Street, Cllr Tim Barnes, Deputy Leader of Westminster City Council and a councillor for the West End, told Times Radio that the Mayor had offered Londoners "a false choice".
Sadiq Khan told the station the choice was between the status quo and "something bold and brave and radical". Speaking to Jane Garvey and Fi Glover on Monday afternoon, Tim said: "He said that the choice was this or it was just leaving it as it was, and that was never the case. Both Tory and Labour councils in Westminster over the last few years have recognised the need for huge investment. We had a plan to invest £120 million in upgrading the street and the public realm areas around it. In fact, £20 million of that had already been spent before Sadiq came along with his plan and consigned that money to the waste bin, in a colossal waste of public resources."
The wrong lessons from abroad
Tim said the Mayor had learned the wrong lessons from cities abroad. In Barcelona, "you keep all of the main ribbons for transport so that people can get to and from the areas, and then you pedestrianise the little bits in between. But instead, the Mayor has turned that on its head."
Closing the one great east-west road forces the buses, taxis, service vehicles and "the plumbers that might be needed if there's a leak in a shop" into Soho, Mayfair, Fitzrovia and Marylebone, "where the streets really aren't big enough to take it".
A rushed first day
Tim called the first day "a bit of a damp squib", while recognising "an awful lot of hard work that people in the Mayor's office have had to do to even get it that far". Key roles at the development company running the street had still not been filled. Cyclists had ignored the marshals and swerved round them, delivery drivers had used the street as a shortcut, and Lime bike riders had carried on despite promises that the motors would cut out at the edge of the zone.
"If the Mayor hadn't put this false deadline on things, we would've been able to have a better managed scheme, we'd have been able to make more of the good things that might come from this and iron out more of the bad."
Keeping people safe
Tim stressed that the problem was a minority of cyclists, but said bikes are often how thieves get around Oxford Street: "They snatch phones out of your hands or snatch handbags and then cycle off at pace into the distance."
"There hasn't been enough done so far to ensure that there's a decent police presence on the street. In fact, there's no extra police uplift that we can see." There was no private security beyond the marshals at either end. "We want people, if they're going to go out and use this, to feel safe. We want the streets to be cleaned properly."
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