‘It’s a better experience’: shoppers praise Oxford Street pedestrianisation

Many punters say inconvenience of bus rerouting is small price to pay for more space, but not everyone is happy

To the east of Oxford Circus, there is chaos. A steady stream of red London buses swing round the last junction before the newly pedestrianised Oxford Street begins. The streets are crammed with pedestrians, some squabbling over who poked whom with their umbrella first.

To the west, pedestrians walk freely through the temporary bollards on to a green welcome banner rolled along the tarmac, declaring Oxford Street traffic-free.

It may be a wetter Monday morning than London’s mayor would have dreamed of, but Sadiq Khan hailed it a “momentous day”. Almost a kilometre of the capital’s most famous shopping street has now been pedestrianised, banishing the buses, bikes, taxis, e-scooters and pedicabs along with private cars.

Shoppers who spoke to the Guardian shared their enthusiasm for Khan’s project, revelling in how the extra space to walk the street and browse the shops meant they were no longer crammed so tightly that they jostled one other off the pavement.

Daniel Te, who had moved to London from the US in July, was so moved by the scene that he whipped out his sketchpad to memorialise the moment. “I’m trying to capture the sheer mass of people going down the street,” he said, observing that despite the pedestrianisation, most people continued to walk on the pavement.

“It’s an entirely new place now, isn’t it?” he said. “My first impression was I remember getting off the Oxford Circus tube stop and seeing the scramble crossing and all the people walking around, and I was like, ‘wow, that’s really cool.’ So now to see the whole street become kind of like the scramble crossing is really exciting.”

Te added that on a typical day he would avoid the street because it was “too busy”. “Now there’s more space to walk around, I’m more inclined to come,” he said.

A former city planner, he considered it “a really big achievement when a street becomes pedestrianised”, adding that he would love to see neighbouring streets become car-free. “Covid taught us a lot about what we can do with our spaces,” he said, noting that although he thought the bus rerouting might make some journeys more inconvenient, “it’s a small price to pay”.

Raquel Cox, who was on holiday from Ireland, came to the street after watching a news item on the pedestrianisation. “We couldn’t believe it. We said, ‘We have to go there and experience it first-hand’.”

Although she acknowledged there could be negative impacts on the surrounding streets, which will become busier as a result, she felt that as a shopper, “it’s a better experience”.

After decades of discussion, the closure to traffic has come into effect in time for the busy Christmas shopping period, although the bigger transformation of the street – a £150m project including trees, seating and level “plazas” for events – will start taking shape from spring 2027.