Last September, U.K.'s Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched a proposal to transform London’s best-known street, Oxford Street, into a pedestrian-only thoroughfare.
A public consultation finished on May 2, so a decision might come soon.
Khan has tried once before to do this, but his proposal then was voted down by elected London politicians.
A recent poll showed that of those questioned 63% thought the idea of pedestrianizing Oxford Street was a good idea, but a higher percentage of those questioned said they did not want driving restrictions where they lived.
Of course, they don’t.
Oxford Street is the Times Square of London. No Londoner would want to go to Oxford Street of their own free will, like no New Yorker (and I was one for 20 years) would want to ever go to Times Square.
When I go to Oxford Street, it is to cross it to go somewhere else. Its shops are mostly awful.
Would pedestrianizing it make sense?
Absolutely. Even if one is driving in the West End of London (one of the capital’s districts subject to congestion charge taxes), one would want to avoid the street anyway.
Black taxis and buses use it a lot, so that helps people get around, but a pedestrian scheme, I believe, is the right approach, as long as hospitality and hotels are at the scheme’s heart.
According to the CoStar database, only one hotel has an Oxford Street address, the Radisson Blu Hotel, London Bond Street, and as is obviously apparent, it chose not to use “Oxford Street” in its name.
Kate Nicholls, CEO of UKHospitality, and Julia Gingell, managing director of Docklands Restaurants & Bars and UKHospitality chair, London group, wrote a joint letter to Khan stating they backed his plans — as long as the role of hotels and food and beverage are intrinsic parts of the overall thinking.
In the letter, they said, "It is our belief that for this to be successful it is imperative that hospitality is used to animate the new pedestrianized area. … When we talk of healthy, successful high streets, one important measure is the diversity created by a mix of hospitality, leisure and retail. All of these are important, and all work together.”
One thing that has to be changed to provide this scheme with a better chance is the cultural attitude.
That is not easily done.
Yes, the weather is getting warmer, but the British lifestyle is far from that of mainland European, or probably that of Southern European, a lifestyle in which retail and tourism are inextricably merged. I think more accurately, what you see in most of the food-and-beverage options along most of the high streets of British towns is a merging with private-equity businesses.
Yes, I am being a snob, I know, and maybe a glass of wine with a side dish of olives and chorizo is why we travel, knowing we do not get the same — not really the same — back home.
Hotels and restaurants provide a different dimension to a High Street.
They are full of people halting somewhere, not merely passing along shop window by shop window.
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