• Oxford Street just got a step closer to going completely car-free (Time Out)
• Cardiff Crossrail Tramway Proposal (TransportforWales)
• East West Rail Autumn 2024 Update: Video (Rail Focus)
• Railway stations on track to boost nature (Barnet Post)
• The Truth About Harry Beck review – the Tortuous Journey behind the Tube Map (Guardian)
• The plan to merge the CTA, Pace, & Metra (ChicagoReader)
• London saw a surprising benefit to fining high-polluting cars: More active kids (Grist)
• No Plane? No Problem (Tedium)
• GWR train service cancelled after two stowaway squirrels ‘refused to leave’ (ITV News Meridian)
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The Mayor’s proposals for pedestrianising Oxford Street is causing a real dong-dong at the moment, as Westminster Council also have different (pre-existing) plans for improvements short of full pedestrianisation).
What is clear with any plan is there needs to be a radical re-think of bus routes, to remove most of the routes from the area. That is likely to result in removal of single seat travel through that part of London, with significant new interchanges at each end of the street and some kind of interconnection between the two.
IMHO the simplest initial answer to that would be a free and frequent single decker with extra space for low-mobility passengers on frequent circulation (18+ hours per day), maybe one way only down the street to create more pedestrian room, and reroute most of the other routes that currently transit Oxford street and Regents Street, far away from the Oxford Street. That may also need a second circulator for Regent’s street as the bus routes may not be able to get easy access (unless they come south from Marylebone Road, down Portland Place)
The circulator buses probably should be partly or completely paid for (and organised by) the relevant Business Improvement District: the New West End company
Miles T
The simplest answer is, in fact A TRAM (!)
Route? ( Beyond the ends of “Oxford St” that is)
The debate about transport on Oxford Street always makes me think of Shanghai, where a road train (the “Great little train”- photo here) plies tourists and shoppers up and down the pedestrian main shopping street, Nanjing Lu.
It doesn’t tend to please transport nerds, but in terms of cheap and practical solutions, easily battery powered too, this is the obvious way to go.