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@Oliver Schick
Two-way operation generally causes a decrease in motor traffic--the reason why one-way systems were built was to increase motor traffic. This intention was, of course, largely poleaxed when it became apparent that they needed signalisation and surface crossings, but even signalised one-way systems tend to have motor traffic capacity advantages over two-way operation, especially where flows are very uneven such as in London, which has heavily tidal radial traffic flows.
Two-way operation causes more stopping traffic, as opposed to one-way through traffic which doesn't benefit the centre. For any town centre in London, one-way operation is poison. If you keep one-way operation, no matter how friendly you make the high street, you still continue to cause all the usual problems for bus passengers, who make up a large proportion of potential footfall for a town centre and who have to walk long distances to and from bus stops in the direction that happens to be inconvenient for them.
Your suggestion for restricting access to walking and cycling only (much as I would be fully signed up to that in many circumstances, see below for the example of Mare Street Narroway) is practicable in smaller, less elongated town centres, but Camden is too long for that. Try walking all the way along North End in Croydon and you quickly see the drawbacks for this shape of town centre.
In another case, the LCC in Hackney has always been strongly in support of taking bus traffic out of Mare Street Narroway and re-routing it around the Hackney Central Triangle. That's a very appropriate environment for achieving access by walking and cycling only, as the size of the town centre inaccessible by bus is relatively small. The trial of this is currently in progress and very successful.
I mean, I'd love it if everybody walked and cycled along all high streets and bus traffic was not a consideration, but that isn't going to be the case in London, perhaps the world's number one bus/public transport city, anytime soon. We always have to consider the particular requirements of each place and take it step by step. In some cases, we can do it, while in other cases it wouldn't make much sense, e.g. in Camden or Stoke Newington. Those both need two-way bus traffic.
One of the main things to achieve for increasing cycling is two-way traffic in such important streets. That's the way to increase numbers, whether you include motor traffic or not. For instance, cycle traffic increased tremendously following the introduction of two-way operation in the otherwise quite cycle-unfriendly environment of Shoreditch once it was made two-way (plenty of work left to do there, but it opened up Hackney in the way that no other scheme could have done). Had TfL done more such schemes, we would now be talking about a much higher modal share of cycling in London, but they always dragged their feet over it and actually introduced more one-way streets. (There have been some nice projects, but big ones like Tottenham Hale are still seriously flawed.)
I'm told that the recent change to two-way operation in the Narroway (where the almost complete absence of motor traffic makes for a much better cycling environment and will do this even more once a better surface is introduced) has increased weekly cycle movements from 17,000 (which number, as I understand it, includes the high incidence of illegal contraflow cycling which went on before the change, so the increase isn't just people going the 'new' other way) to 27,000 in only a couple of weeks--this is despite both main junctions at either end still being untouched and very problematic (but as the network-relevant consideration of two-way operation has been achieved, the nodes can be tackled next). (NB the effect on 'alternative' routes that people used to take hasn't been considered in this, e.g. Churchwell Path, but that's low-volume.) Once you have more cycle traffic, you can talk about further improvements.
As I said, Camden still has a long way to go! I by no means think that the present scheme will create ideal conditions, but it is a step in the right direction, particularly if it facilitates future two-way operation. I'm convinced that once the Camden one-way mess is tackled, Camden will actually have a much higher cycling potential than Hackney, so fingers crossed that happens within our lifetimes. :)