Sadiq Khan’s proposal to ban cyclists from Oxford Street, published on Monday, is an unqualified disaster for cycling in London, perhaps the single biggest blow it has suffered in years. And he’s sending an even more dangerous signal to the rest of the country.

More than 2,000 cyclists a day, according to Department for Transport figures, use the first section proposed for pedestrianisation next year, between Selfridges and Oxford Circus. More than 5,000 a day use the section between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, which is proposed to be pedestrianised in 2019.



These numbers make Oxford Street one of the busiest cycling roads in London. But while yesterday’s announcement includes pages of detail on what happens for taxis, buses, access, and motorists, the alternative arrangement for all those thousands of cyclists gets three sentences.

Transport for London, you’ll be relieved to know, is “developing proposals” for a “high-quality east-west cycle route to the north of Oxford Street”. No further particulars are given, perhaps because a glance at the map would show that the promise is impossible to deliver. East of Oxford Circus, and for almost half a mile north of Oxford Street, there are simply no parallel roads on which such a route could run. None of the east-west roads link up at all directly with those taking you further east.

West of the Circus, travelling in the other direction, parallel roads do exist. But they are controlled by Westminster City Council, meaning the chances of anything serious being done for cyclists on them are about nil. These roads are already busier than Oxford Street is now. They will be busier still once all the taxis and some of the buses move on to them. Even reaching them will require time-consuming diversions and hazardous right turns in traffic.

What will almost certainly happen, therefore, is that large numbers of cyclists will ignore the ban. Oxford Street will become London’s biggest unofficial example of the notorious failure that is “shared space”. That won’t be good for pedestrians, or for the image of cycling. There will be near-misses or worse, arrests, fines, stories in the Daily Mail. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not approve of anyone disobeying the rules. But it’s what happens when you make proposals for a road that totally ignore one of its main user groups.

Make that two of its main user groups: the bus service, too, will be cut in half. Most routes will be curtailed at either end of Oxford Street. Tens of thousands who travel along it daily by bus will have to find other ways. Even those whose destination it is will have to get off half-way back to Holborn, or Lancaster Gate, and walk the rest. The bus service (along with taxis) is the main accessible route into central London for the elderly and disabled: a third group of users whom the proposal treats with contempt.

Officially, Khan is in favour of cycling and public transport. It’s pretty hard to see how a plan which so firmly discourages the users of both can possibly fit with that. I always rather suspected that the mayor would achieve little or nothing on cycling. But even I am surprised that we might actually finish up in minus territory, with fewer cycling roads at the end of his term than we had at the beginning.

By contrast, about a mile away, another Labour authority, Camden, is fighting a public inquiry to defend an exemplary scheme, the Tavistock Place segregated track. It’s pretty absurd that it needed a public inquiry, but it shows the difference between real and merely rhetorical commitment to this subject.

For Oxford Street, there’s an easy alternative to the certainty of conflict baked into the current plans: allow bikes, but design out the conflict by installing a clearly-defined and separated cycle track that lets both pedestrians and cyclists know where they’re supposed to be. You could still roughly treble the space given to pedestrians, which should be more than enough.

Instead, Britain’s one-time cycling flagship is telling the rest of the country, wrongly, that cyclists and pedestrians can’t co-exist in an 80ft-wide street. It’s a troubling message to send.

But here’s an even more heretical thought: is pedestrianisation worth the bother? The number of buses on Oxford Street has been hugely reduced in recent years, and could probably be cut down some more while still maintaining a decent service. Private vehicles are already banned. Cycling’s gone up and the street’s eastern half, at least, is already quite bearable for a pedestrian, with long intervals between buses, yet also accessible for bus users.

I can see why the retail barons want their outdoor shopping mall. But Oxford Street doesn’t actually belong to Sports Direct: it belongs to everyone, including a cleaner taking the night bus from Shadwell to Paddington or a barmaid cycling to work in Fitzrovia.

Khan has been able to get away with banning cycling without an alternative because almost everyone hears the P-word and switches off their critical faculties.