Guardian Long Read: Oxford Street Transformation
Guardian Long Read: Oxford Street Transformation
‘In February, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that Britain’s best-known thoroughfare, Oxford Street, would be pedestrianised. To the surprise of every Londoner that I have spoken to in the past few months, it is actually happening.’
Dan Hancox writes about Oxford Street pedestrianisation in the long read section of the Guardian - Read more here – Guardian - Everyone hates Oxford Street. Will pedestrianisation save it?
The street has closed to traffic on Monday the 26th of October and from then on, several stages of implementation will unfold.
As Dan Hancox says: ‘What happens next week is just the beginning. The first half of Oxford Street will close to traffic on Monday – but the pedestrianisation process that follows will stretch on for well over a year. The people behind the project are anxious that the initial testing phase is not misunderstood as a permanent project that has been built cheaply, or half heartedly. The testing process will involve a lot of people standing around with clipboards and measuring things, observing the different ways and places that pedestrians dwell. Even the picnic benches they are installing will be engaging in data collection, thanks to a “beacon”, a sensor recessed into the seat, that will measure how many people sit down, for how long, and the ambient temperature at the time.’