Centralised discussion space for TfL plans and cycling in London

There are certain political topics that just don't die. 'Pedestrianising' Oxford Street is something that has been talked about for decades. I can remember it being talked about in the 90s, Livingstone tried to come up with a viable plan and failed, and Khan, of course, tried, too. He'll try again. While at the moment this has been kicked into the long grass for (allegedly) political reasons again, the obvious obstacle that still hasn't been addressed is what to actually do.

The main impetus for this initiative has been the prediction of total pedestrian overcrowding in Oxford Street as a result of the nonsensical building of Crossrail (a policy from decades ago intended to stimulate then-dying Central London which became thoroughly obsolete around 15 years ago at least). However, Oxford Street remains, and (I think) will always remain, a vital overground transport corridor, just like all high streets--hugely important historically-grown extremely multi-functional centres. Very few high streets will be pedestrianised successfully without a new high motor traffic capacity bypass being built, with fairly disastrous results--witness Ilford, for example (dozens more in London alone). Exceptions are only oddities like Mare Street Narroway. Needless to say, if only people stopped making so many pointless car-based journeys, the whole thing would be a lot easier in most cases, but there, too, Oxford Street is an exception, as existing overground traffic there simply can't be accommodated in parallel alignments.

Finally, at the top of the reduce-reuse (re-route)-recycle (shift mode) hierarchy also applicable in transportation, you have the question whether said overground traffic couldn't be reduced. After all, doesn't Crossrail mean that people will be arriving more by train than by bus? Most likely not, as greater concentration of transport capacity than before usually doesn't mean that the same number of people/trips just get distributed differently between different modes, but that far more people turn up, which is obviously the main, oft-proven problem with 'predict and provide' or, in the case of Crossrail, just generate far more completely unnecessary overcrowding for the hell of it, because Livingstone for some utterly bizarre reason managed to twist Gordon Brown's arm just before the financial crisis (when Crossrail funding really should have been cancelled but probably wasn't because Brown may have thought that business now really needed government stimulus), benefiting mainly landowners in Central London (mostly Tory supporters, I'd guess) while drawing traffic, and business, away from smaller centres elsewhere in London, ultimately increasing the need to travel, again.

I expect that if and when a Labour government comes in, there will be an attempt to overrule Westminster by means of primary legislation, but that's still some way off. I still doubt it would work even then.

Another thing to note is that the Oxford Street stuff is only a small part of that Roads Task Force 'idea' of building additional highway capacity around the edges (e.g., bypasses, underground ring roads, also hiding existing roads underground and building new city quarters on top) while 'humanising' the centre. I always thought this general approach was utter, utter nonsense.

There's a tremendous continuity in London's politics in some ways, and the Mayor of London currently has far too few powers to change certain things. The London Plan has only succeeded in being swept along with predictable things, like all the Central London overdevelopment nonsense that Livingstone started. The Mayor's Transport Strategy is generally not a very good document, most of the time failing to be sufficiently strategic, and when it is somewhat strategic, that tends to be based on very old policies (e.g., Livingstone's two flagship policies of Congestion Charging and Bus Priority, of which only the latter worked very well). When Livingstone had run out of ideas, he started to scrabble around for new ones that weren't very well thought out, e.g. the numerous conceptual mistakes he made about the Western Extension. Johnson had absolutely no ideas whatsoever and was negligent and lazy, which set London back a very long way in transportation as well as in all other topics. Khan is very unimaginative, which is standard for city mayors (and not at all unusual for lawyers, who tend to have other strengths), making bad decisions like the Silvertown Tunnel and undoubtedly soon other Roads Task Force crap (being unimaginative means that he lets processes like this run once they've started instead of intervening creatively and re-imagining what needs to be done), but obviously hampered by his lack of money, e.g. getting no external TfL funding. He's still a far better mayor than Johnson, but an organ-grinder's monkey would have made a better mayor than Johnson.