There are parallels to draw between London’s Oxford Street and Melbourne’s equivalent – Bourke Street. Each has been home to flagship department stores, each attracts tourists and locals in large numbers, and each is recognised as the high street of the city it serves.
But, according to one visitor from Melbourne on Tuesday there is a major difference: “You can smell it – the air [in London] is not very clean.”
That may be because, save for trams gliding slowly and quietly by, part of Melbourne’s main shopping street has been pedestrianised for decades. However, under plans announced on Tuesday, Melbourne’s present could be Oxford Street’s future.
“In Melbourne, we have closed off our main shopping street … It’s much better,” said Kathy Lacey, who added that it made life feel more liveable. She said that where Oxford Street hosts fleets of red buses and black taxis, Bourke Street has been accessible to trams only for decades. “They are quite slow-moving”, she said. And they are relatively quiet. “It works pretty well.”
She contrasted that with London, which she was visiting for the first time in 50 years: “I’ve found it really busy and the traffic is slow.”
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, announced the £150m proposal to pedestrianise parts of the popular shopping street on Tuesday, as part of a wider regeneration project supported by the government. His previous attempt to ban traffic from the road was blocked by then-Conservative run Westminster city council in 2018.
The current scheme, which would see the stretch between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch pedestrianised, with the potential for further changes towards Tottenham Court Road, is aimed at boosting the experience of shoppers, residents, workers and tourists.
Another foreign visitor to a “very busy” Oxford Street on Tuesday was Tom Blum, from Fribourg in Switzerland. He too noted that his hometown had long since pedestrianised its main shopping street. “It is quite pleasant, quite civilised,” he said. “I think this is the popular view – as long as you have still have good access.”
He said: “A lot of businesses are against it because they are worried people will not come, though I have not seen any evidence this is true.”
In London, the John Lewis executive director, Peter Ruis, said his firm was “delighted to see the plans” for what he called “the nation’s high street”. And Dee Corsi, the chief executive of New West End Company, representing businesses trading on Oxford Street, said the announcement was encouraging, and called on the authorities to move swiftly to get it done.
The opposition has come more from taxi drivers. While many of the firms trading on Oxford Street have welcomed the plans, one taxi driver told the Guardian they were “disastrous”.
“It will be disastrous because that is how we make our living,” said Maurice Mills, whose taxi was parked on the rank outside Selfridges on Oxford Street. “We are not allowed to go Tottenham Court Road way now, you go to the City – I got a ticket the other day dropping off at a hotel.
“Where are you going to pick the jobs up? This is where the shops are,” he said; complaining that people were unlikely to walk a long distance from the flagship store, and other Oxford Street sites, to find the nearest taxi rank if it were to be moved by the plans.
Sorrel Thomas, who was working in the Juicebox London stall on Oxford Street on Tuesday, said she welcomed the plans. “I think it will work well because, sometimes, it really can be very busy. It is a good idea. I don’t know if Oxford Street [businesses] will be affected directly – there is not much parking here, so people already get the bus and train in.
She said her “red line” would be if the local council, which was apparently blindsided by the announcement having drawn up its own plan for Oxford Street that did not involve pedestrianisation, used the implementation of the mayor’s scheme to push stalls such as hers backwards on the pavements – potentially affecting trade.
But, overall, she said: “If it is a nicer place to be, people will spend longer here … I think it will be positive.”