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| Thank you, Mr. Mayor! |
"The past is never dead. It's not even past"—William Faulkner
On 26 February, friends who know about my long-running volunteer campaign to pedestrianise Oxford Street congratulated me by emailing this BBC Report:
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The date of the Mayor's decision was eerily coincidental with my own Oxford Street 'experience': exactly 16 years before, I was released from a ten-week stay in hospital after I was critically injured by a TfL Bus on Oxford Street on 18 December 2009.
The date of the Mayor's decision was eerily coincidental with my own Oxford Street 'experience': exactly 16 years before, I was released from a ten-week stay in hospital after I was critically injured by a TfL Bus on Oxford Street on 18 December 2009.
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| 26 February 2010 |
Although the Mayor's pedestrianisation scheme—running East to West from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street—is bisected by open traffic roads flowing North and/or South at five junctions along Oxford Street, the four smallest of six areas designated to be traffic-free are as long—or longer—than FIFA football pitches, with the two longest areas over twice as long. When it is completed, the approximately 1100m covered by the Mayor's approved plan will be truly 'world-leading': London will have one of the largest pedestrianised city-centre areas in the world.
Since three of the open traffic road junctions bisecting the scheme are—according to a 2015 Department for Transport report— "Three Of Britain’s Most Dangerous Pedestrian Crossings"—including, where Harewood Place/Holles Street intersect the main road, the country's most dangerous, I will be very curious to see what extra safety mitigations that TfL plans to put in place at these specific junctions so that they permanently lose their dubious notoriety.
I have a particular interest to find out exactly how TfL intends to reduce collision risk at the UK's most dangerous junction: I was critically injured there in December 2009 and Dr Chesmal Siriwardhana (a researcher and tutor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) was hit and killed there by a TfL Bus in April 2017.
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| The UK's most Dangerous Pedestrian Crossing - 18 December 2009 |
It is curious to me that all the recent mainstream media reports about Oxford Street have given disproportionate space to a long-running official narrative that pedestrianisation will inconvenience many, especially TfL Bus Users, e.g.—
- The case for banning vehicles from Oxford Street in London is weak Economist (15 Jan)
- Plan to pedestrianise London’s Oxford Street given official go-ahead Guardian (26 Feb)
- Oxford Street pedestrianisation gets go-ahead from Sadiq Khan with traffic ban this summer Evening Standard (26 Feb)
- Sadiq Khan approves plan to pedestrianise part of Oxford Street MyLondon (26 Feb)
Meanwhile, there has been little—or, more often—no mention of the well-evidenced lethal and life-changing outcomes that allowing traffic (i.e, Buses and Taxis) on London's 'premier shopping destination' has imposed on Londoners and visitors for decades.
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| Injury-Causing Collisions on Oxford Street - 2017-2026YTD |
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Because the mainstream media appears to have avoided mentioning the systemic roots of the lethal status quo that has prevailed for decades on Oxford Street, I thought it made sense to note some recent safety performance data here.
Since Sadiq Khan announced his intention to pedestrianise Oxford Street in June 2016 (just days after two pedestrians were killed there within two days from bus collisions)—
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- at least four people have been killed and over 125 injured from collisions on Oxford Street: that's over 1 KSI per month;
- KSI collision incidents on Oxford Street are now twenty percent higher than when Sadiq Khan announced his Vision Zero Programme in July 2018;
- three quarters of Oxford Street's fatal crashes—and about a third that have resulted in serious injury—have involved TfL buses;
- only last month,
a Route 456 bus based at New Cross Garage operated by Go Ahead under contract to TfL inflicted "life changing injuries" on a male pedestrian on Oxford Street.
As an Oxford Street 'survivor', it will be a great comfort to know that when people travel to Oxford Street to shop, work, visit friends or just enjoy some time in the greatest city on earth, the risk of them 'dying helplessly on a city street, their brains and bodies crushed by rushing tonnes of steel'—a risk that has been for years—will be zero.
Since the Mayor's stated Vision Zero goal is "no one killed in or by a bus by 2030" in London, the fact that there is the real possibility that such an 'ambitious' goal will be achieved on 1100 metres of a pedestrianised Oxford Street by 2027 should be celebrated. Moreover, since the Mayor appears to have manifestly triumphed over what appears to be a well-entrenched 'Bus Lobby' at TfL that has publicly opposed pedestrianisation for decades, perhaps there's a story worth investigating?
Regardless, even with 1100 metres of Oxford Street under his belt by the end of next year, the Mayor's still got 20,453,200 metres and less than 4 years remaining to achieve his Vision Zero goal for "no one to be killed in on a bus by 2030" on the rest of London's roads. And based on my analysis of more than ten years of TfL's Bus Safety Data—available since 2017, thanks to my campaign supported by Victoria Borwick AM—the Mayor's faces a tough road ahead of him.
Since 2016—
Since the Mayor's stated Vision Zero goal is "no one killed in or by a bus by 2030" in London, the fact that there is the real possibility that such an 'ambitious' goal will be achieved on 1100 metres of a pedestrianised Oxford Street by 2027 should be celebrated. Moreover, since the Mayor appears to have manifestly triumphed over what appears to be a well-entrenched 'Bus Lobby' at TfL that has publicly opposed pedestrianisation for decades, perhaps there's a story worth investigating?
Regardless, even with 1100 metres of Oxford Street under his belt by the end of next year, the Mayor's still got 20,453,200 metres and less than 4 years remaining to achieve his Vision Zero goal for "no one to be killed in on a bus by 2030" on the rest of London's roads. And based on my analysis of more than ten years of TfL's Bus Safety Data—available since 2017, thanks to my campaign supported by Victoria Borwick AM—the Mayor's faces a tough road ahead of him.
Since 2016—
- in terms of collision KSIs, London Buses have become about 90% more dangerous per mile and 60% more dangerous per hour operation, while all other modes of motor traffic—including HGVs—saw analogous risk profiles improve or stabilise;
- Pedestrian deaths "on or by a bus" rose from an average of about 8 per year (2016) to more than 10 per year in the year ending April 2025;
- A pedestrian in London has become twice as safe from being killed or injured around an HGV for every mile-hour of operation, but today they are nearly 60% more at risk around a TfL Bus for every mile-hour of each bus's operation;
- A cyclist in London has become nearly three times safer around an HGV from being killed or seriously injured for every mile the vehicle is driven, but they are now about 45% more at risk around a TfL Bus and 33% more likely to be killed for every hour a TfL Bus is active on London's roads;
- Buses account for only 0.6% of vehicle miles in London but are now involved in roughly 12–15% of all road fatalities. This "over-representation" has nearly doubled since 2016.
- The evidenced increase in Bus Safety Incident Risk is almost entirely borne by those outside the vehicle. In 2024/25, 85% of those killed by London buses were pedestrians or cyclists.
- For every hour TfL Buses are active on the road, a pedestrian in London is now more likely to be killed by a Red Bus with "Mayor of London" emblazoned on it than an HGV. The opposite was the case in 2016.
Accordingly, this suggests that the Mayor's legacy will depend on a lot more than keeping his 2016 commitment to pedestrianise Oxford Street. It also suggests that (a) Westminster residents forced to live with TfL buses diverted through their streets and (b) cyclists forced to share the road with Buses are certainly within their rights to demand that TfL be transparent about the risks imposed on them, the risk assessments TfL conducted and the specific TfL will implement to mitigate. There is really no excuse for the Mayor's laudable Vision Zero achievement on Oxford Street to be erased
by increasing numbers of people killed and injured by Buses that have been shifted elsewhere.Rest assured, while I'll be enjoy witnessing Oxford Street's transformation from a 'world leading' 'bus-involved' death trap to a global top 10 city-centre pedestrian sanctuary, I'll still be keeping track of the Mayor's Vision Zero 'progress' on achieving his Vision Zero goal of "no one killed in or by a bus" by 2030.
Vision Zero Sum
elsewhere.
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| You're Welcome, Mr. Mayor! |
Source: https://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-pedestrianisation-of-oxford-street.html
Auto-imported from Tom Kearney’s blog.
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