‘Residents do not want the traffic that uses Oxford Street diverted past their homes’

• PETER Hartley, of Westminster Living Streets, wonders why it is, in connection with the Oxford Street / Circus pedestrianisation proposals, that “the slightest change in road patterns brings with it a torrent of opposition”, (Now move on, without cars, July 23).

Well probably because the residents of Seymour, Wigmore, Mortimer and Goodge streets (the A5204) do not want the traffic that currently uses Oxford Street diverted past their homes, this being the only practicable route, south of the congested horror of the Marylebone Road, that links Edgware and Tottenham Court roads and doesn’t take in Oxford Street.

Hartley dismisses our concerns as “long [having] been proved false…”. In fact they haven’t been proved anything; they have simply been traduced and belittled by Hartley in repeated letters to the Extra.

Hartley’s argument is basically this: visitors to Oxford Street, who might only walk the street for a few hours a handful of times in their lifetimes, should be spared the air pollution and the “danger” of the traffic, and that this should be displaced onto the residents of South Marylebone and Fitzrovia.

I am not sure why Hartley thinks it better for my children to endure increased air pollution 24/7 so that a visitor from, say, Taunton can better enjoy their twice-yearly shopping trip to the West End. Why visitors’ interests should be prioritised over residents’ is a mystery.

Clearly Hartley himself doesn’t live on the A5204 or he would hardly be so dismissive of residents’ concerns. Where, in fact, does this “influencer” of the Oxford Street area’s future live? I think we should be told.

LAURENCE EYTON
Mortimer Street, W1