Paul Dimoldenberg: One hundred years of managing transport on Oxford Street

For the past 100 years, Oxford Street has grappled with the impact of the car on its economy, its shoppers and its environment. In this review, I look at the many attempts there have been since the 1920s – by Marylebone and Westminster councils, by the London County Council and the Greater London Council, and by London’s Mayors – to maintain its pre-eminence as “the nation’s high street” by managing its traffic in different ways.

The 1920s

Cars were welcomed to the area in the 1920s, with some of London’s earliest multi-storey car parks appearing in Soho during the Edwardian years. Other car parks were linked with particular shops. For example, Selfridges had space reserved at Macy’s Garage across the road in Balderton Street, north Mayfair, and the Debenham & Freebody and Marshall & Snelgrove stores, owned by the same company, opened a joint car park behind the former’s Wigmore Street premises in 1925.

The 1930s

Parking pressure became so acute that St Marylebone Borough Council repeatedly urged Selfridges to build its own car park to accommodate the vehicles of customers that were filling up the residential streets around Portman Square and Manchester Square.

Traffic lights came to Oxford Street in 1931, following a report from the London & Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee. A network of “control signals” was installed at 20 points along the street, managed from a “control box” at Oxford Circus. Though it was claimed to be “the most ambitious that has yet been attempted in London”, the system was very simple. In essence, when cars were travelling along Oxford Street, all traffic on the north-south streets that crossed it was stopped. And, when the cars were stopped at the lights along Oxford Street, those on the north-south streets could proceed.

Added to this, using the London Traffic Act of 1924, the Ministry of Transport designated some side streets as one-way streets, prohibited certain turns, and banned slow- moving vehicles after midday. The new  system was heralded as an important experiment worthy of national attention, as the regular daily reports in The Times testified. The general view was that it succeeded. However, while cars obeyed the traffic lights, official reports noted that pedestrians were less diligent in crossing Oxford Street at points designated for them.

There was a growing traffic congestion problem in the West End as a whole. In his 1938 novel, Scoop, Evelyn Waugh satirised Piccadilly’s “stationary” traffic as both “continuous and motionless”, and “still as a photograph, unbroken and undisturbed”. Waugh’s character Julia Stitch, wife of cabinet minister, Algernon Stitch, would frequently drive along pavements in her little “baby car” until ordered back onto the road by a policeman. “I wish they wouldn’t,” she complained. “It’s such a nuisance for Algy.”

The 1940s

The 1940s saw Oxford Street having to deal with a completely different kind of transport challenge –  the one presented by enemy aeroplanes. It was bombed multiple times during World War II, including by Heinkels and Dorniers on the night of 17 September, 1940, when an incendiary oil bomb destroyed the West House of the John Lewis department store. The resulting fires damaging the East House significantly, too.

Over 100 John Lewis staff sheltering in a makeshift bomb shelter in the basement of the store survived unscathed. Three firemen, however, were killed when another high-explosive bomb fell nearby.

By the time dawn broke, three other Oxford Street department stores – Selfridges, Bourne & Hollingsworth and Peter Robinson at Oxford Circus – were either ablaze, badly damaged or destroyed.

The interior and several floors of Bourne & Hollingsworth were severely affected, but its staff were back the next day, using large union flags to cover bomb damage to the frontage. A week later, part of the eastern wing of the store was reopened for business.

The 1928 art deco lifts at Selfridges suffered extensive damage and its famous ground floor windows were bricked up until the war was over. One of its sub-basements was converted to accommodate a secret telephone system, codenamed “Sigsaly”. This was linked directly to the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall to provide Winston Churchill with a secure phone link to President Roosevelt.

Post-war plans made no mention of Oxford Street, but Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan envisioned five urban “ringways”, which would have removed “drab and dreary” buildings and half a million people from inner London. The Strand, Piccadilly, Covent Garden and most of Whitehall would all have been obliterated.

The 1950s

Oxford Street’s manually controlled traffic lights continued to operate for over 20 years until 1954, when a faster, automated system was introduced. In 1957, after decades of badgering from Marylebone Council, Selfridges finally built its own car park. This was followed in 1958–59 by restrictions on on-street parking with the introduction of meters on bays along Oxford Street itself and the surrounding area .

The big stores generally welcomed the changes. For example, Bourne & Hollingsworth gave evidence at a public inquiry into a planning application for a new car park in Wells Street, arguing that the operation of their loading bays and garages had been badly impacted by indiscriminate parking in the area.

The 1960s

The growth of car use began to have a serious impact on thinking about Oxford Street’s future. In 1961, the Society for the Promotion of Urban Renewal unveiled a £12 million scheme for what it called High Oxford Street. This was a deck 18 feet above ground, supported by a structure in the centre of the road, including a pedestrian travelator. It was presented at a Royal Institute of British Architecture event, but attracted little support from retailers or the local council. It did, however, have one influential supporter.

In 1963, Professor Colin Buchanan’s seminal government report, Traffic in Towns, proposed a pedestrian deck above Oxford Street with first floor access to shops. In a lecture that year, Buchanan declared Oxford Street “the most uncivilized street in Europe” and argued that it was “a travesty of conditions as they ought to be in a great capital city”. He claimed the opportunity to improve it “has largely been missed”.

Previously, in 1960, planning work for the London Underground’s new Victoria line raised concerns about the increase in above-ground congestion at Oxford Circus, whose station would become busier. Ernest Marples, the Minister of Transport, offered the London County Council the finance to widen Oxford Street for the short distance between Oxford Circus and Holles Street.

In 1961, Marples proposed a one-way plan for traffic, with Oxford Street carrying it from east to west and Wigmore Street so the north of Oxford Street and and Brook Street to its south, west to east. But this plan was opposed by both Marylebone Borough Council and the Westminster Council of that time, as well as by retailers, who had by now organised themselves as the Oxford Street Association.

Car parking construction continued in order to accommodate the ever-increasing number of car-borne shoppers. Large underground car parks were built beneath Cavendish Square and Park Lane. Debenhams decided to rebuild its car park in Welbeck Street to a brutalist design by Michael Blampied and Partners. This was completed in 1971 (and demolished in 2019).

The 1970s

Oxford Street had become so popular and its pavements so busy that shoppers found themselves forced into the road, particularly along the busier western part outside Selfridges and Marks & Spencer. A 1971 study by the then new Westminster City Council found that pedestrian flows exceeded 16,000 people per hour. The situation was summarised by a 1974 report from the Greater London Council (GLC) and Imperial College researchers. This said “The conflict between its twin roles of shopping centre and major traffic route was demonstrated in its accident record which put Oxford Street at the top of the list of accident black spots in London.”

Previously, another 1971 report revealed that only 16 per cent of Oxford Street’s vehicles used the street as a thoroughfare. It also highlighted a very high level of injuries resulting from collisions between vehicles and pedestrians. This sparked the formation of an Oxford Street Action Committee, which held a demonstration calling for a ban on cars and resulted in 22 arrests. The young Evening Standard journalist Simon Jenkins wrote: “This street is like some huge dinosaur, surviving from the ice age of urban planning.” But neither Jenkins nor the committee could come up with an answer to where the cars would go, other than a reference to the “back streets”.

The GLC’s Greater London Development Plan designated Oxford Street – pictured above as it looked in the 1970s – a “major problem area”, leading to the GLC, which had stronger powers than its London County Council predecessor, banning cars between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm from the west part of Oxford Street, with only buses, taxis, cycles and essential delivery vehicles given access. Though opposed by Westminster and the Mayfair Association, it was introduced between Portman Street and Oxford Circus in November 1972. The scheme was extended to the Oxford Circus to Tottenham Court Road section in March 1974. A London Transport analysis of the impact of banning cars estimated that retail sales increased by £250,000 and its own revenues by £77,000.

In addition, the pavements were widened, reducing Oxford Street from two lanes in each direction to a single one, with additional lay-bays for bus stops and taxi drop-offs. New paving, shrubs, small trees in tubs, and benches were added, too. However, the street environment was still poor, with many pointing to the street clutter – poles and signs everywhere, including poles with no signs on them. This is essentially the Oxford Street we see today, with some revisions such as the further pavement widening and added planters following the pandemic.

The 1980s

In 1983, the architect Bryan Avery proposed the building of a three-lane elevated road to run the length of Oxford Street, from Marble Arch to St Giles Circus about two storeys above street level. The ground below would be pedestrianised. Stalls and kiosks located under the new “flyover” would cover part of the estimated £47 million cost of the project. Escalators would carry pedestrians up to the elevated level for bus stops and taxi pick-ups.

The plans also included building a glass canopy over the shops, effectively turning Oxford Street into a covered shopping mall. “All the traffic could be accommodated exactly as existing, whilst also increasing the pedestrians’ realm dramatically,” Avery claimed.

He presented his ideas to a group of retailers, Westminster councillors, local groups and other stakeholders at a meeting at Marylebone Council House. This was followed by a special joint meeting of Westminster Council’s highways and planning committees, which recommended that “these proposals merit further study by this council, the GLC [Greater London Council], and other public bodies, as well as discussions with the public”.

However, following unfavourable local and national press coverage, including from Bernard Levin in The Times, nothing further was heard of Avery’s idea.

The 1990s

In 1992, transport journalist and author (and later aspiring mayoral candidate) Christian Wolmar pointed to six deaths and 250 pedestrians injured by cars during that year, together with worsening pollution, as clear reasons for pedestrianising Oxford Street.

“It is not the IRA bombers who pose the greatest threat to shoppers in Oxford Street at Christmas time,” he wrote in the Independent. “The sheer weight of the number of shoppers forces those in a hurry off the pavement and into the street which, though closed to normal traffic, still has some 500 taxis and 125 buses going along it every hour in each direction at peak times.”

But the Oxford Street Association was still opposed to the idea, raising concerns about its impact on customers, and taxi drivers argued that journeys would be made longer and more expensive for their passengers. Westminster Council asked where the buses would go in the absence of an alternative east-west route.

The council also continued to undertake limited improvements, including near Marble Arch where pavements were widened and repaved by narrowing the width of the road, new trees were planted and concrete tree tubs, removed. Further work on the whole length of Oxford Street, at a cost of £8-£10 million, was also mooted. But this depended on contributions from retailers and landowners, which proved difficult to negotiate with the Oxford Street Association.

The 2000s

In 2004, Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes became the first mayoral candidate to make pedestrianising Oxford Street a manifesto pledge. And in 2006, the then-Mayor, Ken Livingstone, announced plans for a tram along Oxford Street, including a terminus at Marble Arch.

The New West End Company business improvement district welcomed this idea. But Livingstone did not propose full pedestrianisation of Oxford Street, arguing that to do so would be a “disaster”. He commissioned John McAslan + Partners to do a feasibility study for the tram proposal, but that failed to see the light of day.

In 2009, Westminster installed a diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus, inspired by the Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, which is still operational today.

The 2010s

In March 2010, Christian Wolmar repeated his Oxford Street prescription. Writing in Transport Times, his article, ‘Oxford Street needs a radical rethink, not tinkering’, he highlighted a report from the London Assembly called Street Ahead. This revealed, “There are a staggering 300 buses per hour in peak hours. The street has an accident rate 35 times higher than the London average and pollution levels nearly five times above EU limits. Yet, unaccountably, taxis are still allowed to ply their trade in the street – because TfL has been too scared to boot them out.”

Wolmar argued: “The only realistic solution, (is) total pedestrianisation”. His solution would be, “Kick out the taxis tomorrow, and remove the buses. Allow people to walk in the street, since there are flows of 29,000 per hour. Already, Oxford Street is closed for one day per year, and London copes, so why not make it permanent?” He concluded with a radical vision: “By all means allow a few minibuses, preferably electric, to circulate in the otherwise closed streets, as they do in Vienna – which should not be allowed to go faster than walking pace – put in lots of taxi ranks on the side streets and reroute buses.”

 In January 2012, Westminster asked Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester City Council, to chair a multi-agency inquiry into the future of the West End. Participants included TfL, Camden Council, NWEC, local groups and academics such as Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. It was the idea of the new council leader, Conservative Philippa Roe, after her predecessor Tory, Colin Barrow, resigned following the council’s failed attempt to revise West End evening and weekend parking regulations – a controversial proposal which filled the pages of the Evening Standard for months. The storm of opposition from retailers, churches, musicians, casinos and restaurateurs formed an unlikely, but very powerful alliance.

The initial report of the West End Partnership was published in April 2013 and included a recommendation for dealing with Oxford Street traffic, which did not propose pedestrianisation. The report argued instead for a review of “how changing patterns of travel in light of Crossrail will impact upon bus movements and routings.” Then, in the summer of 2015, the partnership produced a Vision for the West End in 2030, containing a promise to “reduce traffic volumes on Oxford Street and develop solutions to remedy long-standing transport challenges.”

The plan proposed a £50 million investment in the west of Oxford Street to reduce traffic and improved pedestrian safety, “oasis spaces” and improvements to the Marble Arch junction. It argued that the area to the west of Oxford Circus, which it dubbed Oxford Street West, should provide “the world’s best outdoor street shopping experience, achieved by a reduction in vehicles with greater use of surrounding streets for loading, servicing and taxi pick-up.” The east of Oxford Street was allocated £6.5 million to complete street and highway improvements connected with the Tottenham Court Road Crossrail station and the introduction of two-way traffic on Tottenham Court Road itself.

Meanwhile, the future of Oxford Street had become a key issue of political jockeying in advance of the 2016 mayoral election. In September 2014, Wolmar announced that he was seeking to become Labour’s candidate. The following month Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Stephen Knight launched a report, Oxford Street – The Case for Pedestrianisation. “The time has come to close Oxford Street to all current traffic and in its place introduce a high frequency, zero emission shuttle bus (fitted with the latest road safety sensors) together with a modern ‘one hour’ ticketing system,” he argued. “The benefits would include faster journey times, cheaper travel, cleaner air, safer streets and greater visitor satisfaction, as well as making the street more accessible for those, young and old, who are currently put off visiting the area.”

 In January 2015, Knight’s arguments about poor air quality were supported by a King’s College report which said the annual limit for nitrogen dioxide levels set by the European Union was exceeded in Oxford Street within just four days of the start of that year.

Nevertheless, business interests remained sceptical about the benefits and practicalities of pedestrianisation. The NWEC’s Jace Tyrrell said in 2015: “We do not believe that closing Oxford Street entirely to traffic will solve the problems of congestion and pollution … Such a move would simply shift traffic to surrounding streets and add to the issue. We believe there are more effective ways of improving pedestrian access to Oxford Street and the surrounding area, and we have already invested in plans alongside Westminster City Council and TfL to reduce the amount of traffic on the street.”

However, business doubts did nothing to deter the enthusiasm of 2016 mayoral candidates for Oxford Street pedestrianisation, including Sadiq Khan who defeated Wolmar and others to become Labour’s nominee. Dave Hill, On London‘s publisher and editor, but at that time the Guardian’s London commentator, wrote:

“Mayoral candidates of different parties are competing to seize ownership of the idea like sharp-elbowed bargain hunters on the first day of the January sales. Labour’s Sadiq Khan …..said that he would turn Oxford Street into “a tree-lined shoppers’ paradise” as part of a wider pledge to purify London’s air. Sian Berry for the Greens and Liberal Democrat candidate Caroline Pidgeon have long wanted to purge motor traffic from the 1.2 mile section of the dear old A40. By early October, Conservative Zac Goldsmith was envisaging ‘greater pedestrianisation’ of the street.”

In May 2016, Khan won the mayoral election. One of his manifesto priorities had been to “Restore London’s air quality to legal and safe levels, with action to make travel greener and pedestrianise Oxford Street, while protecting the green belt.”

With the aim of completing the pedestrianisation by 2020, Khan appointed Valerie Shawcross as Deputy Mayor for Transport and said he would, “Work with Westminster Council, local businesses, Transport for London and taxis, to pedestrianise Oxford Street. I will start by bringing back car-free days, and possibly weekends, before moving towards full pedestrianisation. Our eventual ambition should be to turn one of the world’s most polluted streets into one of the world’s finest public spaces – a tree-lined avenue from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch.”

In September 2016, Bryan Avery reprised his 1983 plans for an “overpass” rather than rerouting buses along Oxford Street. According to the Architects’ Journal, “Buses and taxis would drive along the overpass, which would consist of two lanes for traffic and a third for vehicles to collect passengers, while pedestrians would walk along Oxford Street beneath. Lifts and stairs from street level would provide access to the bus stops.”

In November 2016, TfL announced plans for fewer buses along Oxford Street by changing “23 central London bus routes to better match bus services with demand from passengers” and to “improve the reliability of a number of bus routes that currently get caught up in congestion along Oxford Street.” The new proposals would see more bus routes ‎starting and finishing at Park Lane, Trafalgar Square and Tottenham Court Road rather than moving at very low speed along Oxford Street.

Few were surprised when residents’ groups opposed these changes. “We all want a Better Oxford Street which really tackles the issues of congestion, air quality and safety rather than just shifting the problems into the surrounding streets and areas which play a vital part of the West End’s success,” they said. However, campaign group Living Streets wanted them to go further. “It is essential that any final proposal includes the full removal of motor vehicles travelling along Oxford Street, including buses and taxis, if it is to be transformed into one of the world’s great public spaces,” it said.

In September 2017, the Mayor’s team of 50 design advocates was asked to look at a potential redesign. And that November, the Mayor and Westminster unveiled proposals for consultation following what Dave Hill characterised as “months of traffic modelling, creative compromise and consensus-building involving the major retailers, local residents, Transport for London and Westminster Council.

He added: “There’s an array of competing interests to be reconciled and not everyone can get their way.” The consultation responses were as expected, with Fitzrovia residents arguing that the displacement of traffic, especially buses, would bring gridlock and pollution to neighbourhood streets, to the detriment of small local businesses. Less predictable was the response of Boris Johnson’s former cycling commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, who called the plans “an unqualified disaster for cycling in London, perhaps the single biggest blow it has suffered in years”.

In April 2018, just weeks before the Westminster City Council elections, everything changed following the appearance on the ballot papers of three candidates for the Campaign Against Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. They stood in the West End, Dorset Square & Bryanston and Marylebone High Street Wards. Councillor Daniel Astaire, Westminster’s cabinet member for Oxford Street, announced a halt to the pedestrianisation plans. At a full council meeting, he said:

“TfL and the Mayor are the main proponents of the changes to the street, but it belongs to the council and the decision rests with us. I have informed them that detailed work on the scheme is to be stopped. They had even wanted to appoint an artist to design street concept art, but I have stopped this too. At present there is no scheme nor a proposal which is acceptable to the council.”

Astaire said the council would only back a plan that addressed the concerns of residents, and warned that any legal move by TfL to take control of the street could take years of court action. The three Labour candidates for West End Ward, Pancho Lewis, Patrick Lilley and Caroline Saville, told a local election meeting that they, too, “could not support these proposals” until a long list of residents’ concerns were resolved.

Khan was clearly taken aback by Westminster’s rejection of the “joint proposals”, which had already cost £8 million, calling it a “betrayal”. He pledged: “I won’t walk away from Oxford Street.”

The 2020s

In May 2022, Labour won control of Westminster City Council for the very first time, partly on the back of the incumbent Conservative administration’s failure to come forward with an acceptable agenda for Oxford Street. Many will recall the related, £6 million, Marble Arch Mound, the “flagship initiative” which made the council an international laughing stock.

Having won the election, it was now Labour’s job to sort out Oxford Street, a task that cabinet member for planning and economy, Geoff Barraclough, took on with vigour and enthusiasm. Geoff’s task was to produce a plan which would bring together all the key stakeholders – retailers, landowners, taxi drivers, the NWEC, disabilities groups, TfL, the Mayor and, crucially, residents’ groups. Pedestrianisation was never on the agenda as this was never going to be agreed to by everyone, with not only residents opposed. It was crucial to the new administration that its Oxford Street plan had the widest possible support.

From 2022 until 2024, the Westminster team worked painstakingly, arranging extensive consultation and discussion in order to create its public realm improvement plan. The council’s goal was to, in its words, “deliver a street environment aligning with the international status and reputation of the street”. Design detail would include “a high quality and consistent palette of materials, increased pedestrian space including new amenity spaces, and improved lighting, greening, and seating. Active travel including cycling will be supported, whilst maintaining vehicular access on the street.” Vitally, the £90 million cost for the new pavements, street lighting, trees and greenery was to be shared 50/50 by the council and the Oxford Street stores and landowners. Work was intended to start in spring 2025 and finish two years later, in the summer of 2027.

At the same time, the council’s regeneration team worked with land and property owners to repurpose empty premises with new “meanwhile” retail uses, giving up-and-coming retailers the opportunity to trade on the nation’s most famous shopping street. There was strong action by the council’s trading standards and licensing teams, working alongside His Majesty’s Customs and Revenue and the police, against the scourge of the US-style “candy stores”, most of which were operating Business Rates avoidance scams.

This paved the way for a wave of new store openings, such as the return of HMV to Oxford Street followed by others such as Abercrombie & Fitch and IKEA, which opened last week. The London Standard reported: “Oxford Street is effectively ‘full up’ for the first time since the pandemic with the vacancy rate falling to little more than 1%.”

Then, in September 2024, Mayor Khan renewed his pledge “not to walk away from Oxford Street” by announcing, with no consultation, his surprise plan to pedestrianise Oxford Street and to create a Mayoral Development Corporation to oversee its implementation. Immediately, the £45 million pledged by the Oxford Street retailers fell away. Public consultation on the Mayor’s plan has just closed. But will anything actually happen?

Since the Mayor’s bombshell dropped, not a great deal more information about his project has emerged, beyond his stating that he will not be spending much public money on it and his belief that there is “great appetite” in the private sector to pay. In terms of strategy, the Financial Times recently reported that it is the Mayor’s view that local residents should not be “dictating” plans for Oxford Street.

During this year and next, the Mayor will start the legal and consultative process for taking Oxford Street out if Westminster’s control and making TfL, which is responsible to him, the highway authority instead. He has started to recruit a design team. But he has also indicated that he only proposes to pedestrianise the area between Oxford Circus and Selfridges before his current term as Mayor ends in May, 2028.

Whatever further ambitions Mayor Khan has for Oxford Street, he should remember that not every grand project touted as the answer to London’s problems has come to fruition or looked good in hindsight. In the 1960s and 1970s, transport planners believed that urban motorways were the future for Covent Garden, Hampstead, Battersea and Highbury Fields. Will pedestrianisation of Oxford Street turn out to be a panacea of another unlamented false dawn?

Paul Dimoldenberg has recently stepped down as Westminster’s cabinet member for city management and is to retire as a Westminster councillor following many years in local politics. Follow him on Bluesky.

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