Tim Barnes is the Conservative candidate for the West End by-election, which includes Oxford Street. In an open letter to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, he outlines the concerns of many people about the Mayor's plans to pedestrianise what is known as the nation's High Street.
I tried replying to your post of images about Oxford Street, but your team has turned off replies. This is likely because of the large number of those criticising the idea, but it is a bad look when you are already ignoring past discussions and views from local people.
This is a public message to you with ten points on why I believe it will not work and why you risk damaging London and the prospects for growth.
The issue isn't how the street could look. A bit of GenAI and anyone could show a magical, mythical, beautiful Oxford Street. The images you shared are great.
The problems are all about how that street will function, not imagining what it might look like. There are streets in Paris where similar ideas have led to damaging drops in sales and tumbling rents.
Please rethink this now.
(1) Where will the buses and taxis go? The small streets on every side of Oxford Street were laid out in the days of horse and cart, and they could not take the load of vehicles that would be forced onto them.
(2) How will those businesses be serviced? Will they be pushed into the backstreets, too, forcing local residents out of their homes? We are already seeing businesses decline because there are few local people on the slow days.
(3) How will the elderly and disabled get there? The buses will be too far from the street for many to be able to make it. Or are you planning a centre that can only be accessed by the young and able-bodied?
(4) Maybe you are planning to demolish homes and offices that are just in the way? Purchasing those would cost billions.
(5) A version of this plan went for public consultation in 2018. Local people who know the area REJECTED the plan because they understood it wouldn't work. You know that because you vowed at the time to ignore them and come back again with the plan, you are now reviving this Frankenstein policy.
(6) Conservative and Labour councillors in Westminster spent over a decade examining options and concluded regeneration was a better route. There is an actual cross-party agreement here, and it's being ignored!
(7) Millions have been committed, and the spending has started. That money would be wasted under this plan, and the whole area will wait another two years for anything major to happen.
(8) This new model of a development corporation isn't about making something happen because people here are NIMBYs. It's about riding roughshod over local democracy and the understanding of local people who like the idea of the street being improved but know this will not work.
It's ego, not progress.
(9) Pedestrianisation can be great. This is South Molton Street just off Oxford St. It works because it's short, easy to access, and doesn't displace so much traffic that it cannot be absorbed. More of this would be wonderful.
(10) This proposal is like turning every motorway in the country into a walking path and telling vehicles to only use B roads. It will be a net destroyer of business value and homes.
