Was in Oxford Street today, of which about half is currently closed to
all traffic due to a fire in the shop next to M&S (I forget what it
was called).

I couldn't help but notice that it was far more pleasant - less
crowded and pretty much unpolluted - compared with its usual bus- and
taxi-filled anarchy. I would as such consider that there is a serious
case for pedestrianisation, with buses serving passengers either on
all the crossing streets or perhaps on a specially-built bus station
or similar somewhere around the middle. There are plenty of parallel
streets that can take the through traffic.

What are peoples' thoughts on this?

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

On 28 Apr, 22:21, (Neil Williams)
wrote:
Was in Oxford Street today, of which about half is currently closed to
all traffic due to a fire in the shop next to M&S (I forget what it
was called).

I couldn't help but notice that it was far more pleasant - less
crowded and pretty much unpolluted - compared with its usual bus- and
taxi-filled anarchy. I would as such consider that there is a serious
case for pedestrianisation, with buses serving passengers either on
all the crossing streets or perhaps on a specially-built bus station
or similar somewhere around the middle. There are plenty of parallel
streets that can take the through traffic.

What are peoples' thoughts on this?

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

Even if there are plenty of parallel streets which could take the bus
traffic, that doesn't seem to be where it was going. While some of
the routes turned around at Tottenham Court Road (e.g. 25), there were
others (7, 8, 73) which appeared to be diverted via Regent Street,
Piccadilly and Shaftsbury Avenue rather than to the north of Oxford
Street. There were lots of "short" destinations on the front of buses
so traffic must have been bad.

However, I agree that Oxford Street isn't really the right place to
run a lot of the services that use it. On a Saturday, I reckon that a
journey from Aldwych to Paddington might sometimes be quicker using
11/36-436 via Victoria or 9/36-436 via Hyde Park than by taking the 15
or 23. There is some virtue in the idea of the Oxford Street / Regent
Street tram but I don't think the travelling public would necessary
buy having to change.

Jonathan

On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 09:21:06PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:

I would as such consider that there is a serious
case for pedestrianisation, with buses serving passengers either on
all the crossing streets or perhaps on a specially-built bus station
or similar somewhere around the middle. There are plenty of parallel
streets that can take the through traffic.

Most of those parallel streets are quite small, with tight corners at
the intersections. They certainly can't take bendy buses and might have
trouble with proper buses too. Most cabs already use the parallel
streets unless they going to or from an address on Oxford St itself.

I travel on one of the larger parallel streets - Shaftesbury Avenue -
and the closure of Oxford St meant that it, Regent St, Piccadilly
Circus, part of Piccadilly, and Charing Cross Road plus probably some
other stuff that I didn't see, were moving *very* slowly.

--
David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

I apologize if I offended you personally,
I intended to do it professionally.
-- Steve Champeon, on the nanog list

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007, Neil Williams wrote:

I couldn't help but notice that it was far more pleasant - less crowded
and pretty much unpolluted - compared with its usual bus- and
taxi-filled anarchy. I would as such consider that there is a serious
case for pedestrianisation, with buses serving passengers either on all
the crossing streets or perhaps on a specially-built bus station or
similar somewhere around the middle. There are plenty of parallel
streets that can take the through traffic.

What are peoples' thoughts on this?

I'm in complete agreement. I remember much of Oxford St being closed for
roadworks one night a while ago, and i cycled along it (the odd row of
cones not being much of an impediment to a bike) - it was wonderful.

The pedestrianisation of Oxford Street has been much discussed; the main
idea seems to be to split bus routes using it in two (terminating at new
bus stations at Marble Arch and St Giles's Circus, i suppose), rather than
rerouting them. The tram also features heavily in this - it's the only
practical way of moving people rapidly along the street, and shuttling
people between the bus stations, given the pedestrianisation.

I do wonder if there's room undeneath the roadway for either a huge long
road underpass, or a very shallow subsurface tram or underground line. The
Central line is presumably rather deeper, and although there will be pipes
and cables and things, dealing with these is a matter of detail
(admittedly a very expensive one) rather than a showstopper.

The other thing that needs be done is sinking the Marble Arch gyratory, so
there's continuous pedestrian access between Hyde Park, the arch, and
Oxford Street. Again, perhaps possible, but exorbitantly expensive.

tom

--
People don't want nice. People want London. -- Al

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

I do wonder if there's room undeneath the roadway for either a huge long
road underpass, or a very shallow subsurface tram or underground line. The
Central line is presumably rather deeper, and although there will be pipes
and cables and things, dealing with these is a matter of detail
(admittedly a very expensive one) rather than a showstopper.

Although the entrances are often in the ground floor of buildings, aren't
all the underground station ticket halls immediately below the road
surface? - relocating those seems rather more than a matter of detail, I
reckon...

Paul

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Paul Scott wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

I do wonder if there's room undeneath the roadway for either a huge
long road underpass, or a very shallow subsurface tram or underground
line. The Central line is presumably rather deeper, and although there
will be pipes and cables and things, dealing with these is a matter of
detail (admittedly a very expensive one) rather than a showstopper.

Although the entrances are often in the ground floor of buildings,
aren't all the underground station ticket halls immediately below the
road surface? - relocating those seems rather more than a matter of
detail, I reckon...

Curses, foiled again!

tom

--
That's the problem with google. You can usually find what you're looking
for with a fairly simple search. It's knowing *which* fairly simple
search out of the millions of possible fairly simple searches you need
to use to find it ;-) -- Paul D

On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 12:49:09PM +0100, Tom Anderson wrote:

The pedestrianisation of Oxford Street has been much discussed; the main
idea seems to be to split bus routes using it in two (terminating at new
bus stations at Marble Arch and St Giles's Circus, i suppose)

The St Giles's Circus one would have to be something other than what's
already there at Tottenham Court Road and at the back of Centre Point.
At certain times of day that all slows down because buses coming out from
under Centre Point have to merge into traffic going westbound along New
Oxford St, or cross that traffic to go east.

The routes crossing each other could perhaps be done away with if all
westbound traffic were to dogleg south and west around Centre Point
before turning north or south along Charing Cross Road, and anything
eastbound were to go west onto Charing Cross Road, north to the
junction, then east along New Oxford St (this assumes nothing's coming
out of Oxford St). Trouble is, there's not a lot of room around the
back of Centre Point for several buses on different routes to stop and
then move around each other, so you'll end up with a long queue of buses
waiting to get into the station just like sometimes happens at Victoria,
where Terminus Place being full will prevent any buses going into the
bus station itself, despite the bus station being empty.

Also there's not a great deal of space for the huge area that a bendy
bus needs to turn in.

--
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