Everyone agrees that a pedestrianised Oxford Street would offer a vastly more pleasant visitor experience (The Guardian view on Oxford Street: a pedestrianisation project with legs, 22 September). But Sadiq Khan’s scheme needs to resolve the same obstacle that has defeated all of the numerous previous attempts.
General traffic is already banned from Oxford Street, so the problem is the presence of buses and taxis. The taxis could be required – no doubt under protest – to pick up and set down in the numerous side streets, but there is no obvious alternative for the 16 bus routes that now use it.
These routes convey more than 200,000 passengers to, from or via Oxford Street every day – many of whom, before they board or after they alight, are exactly the same individuals as the pedestrians whose interests everyone is rightly keen to promote.
London has no central bus station, so the stops along Oxford Street fufill this function. If they were in a bus station, it would be the busiest in Europe, and possibly the world. There is no parallel road running the length of Oxford Street on to which they could be diverted, and no vacant land that could be used as a terminus.
Creating a mayoral development corporation will shift the locus of political responsibility, but it cannot readily reconfigure the urban geography of central London, which lies at the heart of this perennial dilemma.
John Cartledge
Former head of research, London TravelWatch
• Your editorial on the need to consult carefully over the plan to pedestrianise Oxford Street is right and timely. But there is no mention of the needs of bus users. Those of us who live in north-west London who cannot use the tube because of lack of disabled access (West Hampstead is a particularly striking example) rely entirely on the 139 route to get to Oxford Circus, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden or Waterloo (South Bank). We need to know precisely how the bus access currently provided from north to south of Oxford Street is to be maintained or replaced.
Martin and Barbara Harris
London
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
