Peter Hartley of Westminster Living Streets

• THE letter from Susan Kaye (Oxford Street is different, June 16) is such a distortion of my views on the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street that first can I appeal for a little calm and reason if we are to have an open and frank debate about the future of the UK’s most important shopping street?

I fully understand that things may become more difficult for her and others who live close by but that does not negate the need to do something radical here, and there is only one choice and that is pedestrianisation.

Retaining traffic is not an option. The statistics on those killed and seriously injured in the street are horrifying – far more in the last decade than the tragedy in the fire in Grenfell Tower which has appalled the country.

There is a traffic collis­ion every week in Oxford Street and perhaps some­one will explain to me what will happen to the millions more shoppers arriving after the opening of Crossrail if we do nothing. Are they too going to be knocked down and killed just because a minority will be incon­ven­i­enced?

You need to talk to my friend Tom Kearney who was stand­ing on the pavement, yes a pavement, outside John Lewis one day, minding his own business, when a bus hit him and put him in a coma and at death’s door.

By a miracle Tom recovered but why do we allow these tragedies to continue year after year? How many more citizens have to die before we say enough is enough? And how exactly will we stop the thousands dying early from air pollution if we don’t get rid of the traffic?

The very same people who complain about air quality are those who continue to drive around at will. Oxford Street is one of the most polluted streets in the world, breaking every guidance and regulation that there is to break.

Stand in the street for a few minutes and the stink of the fumes pervades your breath and eyes. Is this what we want the world to experience in the heart of our great city?

No one, least of all the mayor, is suggesting that there will not be buses in the West End. For years everyone has been com­plaining that the huge number of buses using Oxford Street, many main­ly empty for large parts of the day, was effectively creating a “bus garage” in the street. There will be new bus routes using Wigmore Street which is a perfectly adequate road for bus travel.

Is it too much to ask for shoppers to walk a couple of minutes from there to Oxford Street? A number of side streets will remain open for taxi travel and deliveries will be done at night as a huge number are carried out already.

To the local residents I make this appeal. When you come to live in the middle of a great capital city like London you do not live in an island. Your areas have been rat-run for years by motor traffic and you have done noth­ing about it.

You have this opportunity now to filter out this traffic so that your lives will no longer be blighted by this menace. So rather than complain about pedestrianisation, which will improve the lives of millions, why don’t you work with us to remove the scourge of too much traffic in your areas?

Your views have to be considered but remember the millions who use Oxford Street every week. They deserve the right to come to London, to visit, shop, and be entertained and to leave again alive and well.

Finally, I am not com­paring other pedestrian­ised streets in London with Oxford Street. I am just making the point that there has never been any proposed road closure anywhere which has not met with the barrage of criticism we appear to be experiencing now.

The truth is that all the great cities of the world are doing or have done exactly what is proposed in Oxford Street and closing their centres to through-traffic. And without exception they have all created a finer environment for shoppers and residents alike.

We need to retain London as the greatest capital city in the world and we need to pedestrianise Oxford Street to do so.

PETER HARTLEY
Chair of Westminster Living Streets