Noted on 27 Oct 2026

From yesterday, almost a kilometre of Oxford Street is closed to every vehicle except emergency services, with deliveries allowed between midnight and 7am. Buses, taxis, private hire, bikes and pedicabs have all been sent round the corner.

The jobs the kerb used to do have moved round the corner too. The bus stops are now on Wigmore Street, Henrietta Place and Cavendish Place, about 200 metres away, and deliveries to the street itself have to fit into seven hours overnight. Pushing that work onto the streets behind is what sank the last attempt. In 2018 Westminster pulled its support for pedestrianisation, saying its prime concern was "the displacement of traffic" onto the streets around Oxford Street.

This time it went a different way. In September last year the Mayor moved the street from Westminster's control to TfL's, giving TfL the power to change "traffic movements, bus routes and kerbside activities (loading, bus stops, etc)". Westminster agreed the same day. A new body set up by the Mayor took over planning for the area in January, and the barriers went up just over a year after that first decision.

It's the same pattern as pedicabs and e-bikes, where TfL didn't start with the influence and went and got it. It's also quite a contrast with car clubs. When the London Assembly asked TfL for a pan-London car club plan last year, TfL said it has "less direct influence" over car clubs, whose bays sit on borough streets. So the space a shared car needs is still priced 33 different ways, from free in a few boroughs to over £2,300 a year per car in others.

I think Oxford Street shows how quickly the kerb can change once City Hall decides it matters. For car club bays, it hasn't decided that yet.

A question for borough transport teams: is there a street in your patch where you'd hand the kerb to TfL, and what would you want in return?