Oxford Street Closes to Traffic as Pedestrianisation Begins

Almost a kilometre of Oxford Street closed permanently to vehicle traffic yesterday, opening the first phase of the London shopping street's pedestrianisation. The section between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street, roughly half of the two-kilometre street, is now fully car-free.

Cars, buses, taxis, private hire vehicles, cycles, scooters and pedicabs are all banned from the stretch and will be routed via side streets. Photographs from the unveiling show the roadway carrying a large sign reading "Oxford St", with green bollards holding back traffic.

Who designed the transformation?

Local architecture studio East leads the design, working with landscape architecture studio JL Gibbons and urban design studios Gehl and Publica. Hawkins\Brown is separately developing a long-term vision for the full length of the street, which runs from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch.

The pedestrianised section now enters a transition period. East's team will add new signage, seating and planters to make the area more visitor-friendly. The full transformation is expected to begin in 2027 and complete by 2028.

"As we have seen from Borough High Street to Eltham, from Croydon to Green Lanes, London's high streets are the public face of the city in all its diversity, its greenery and its energy," East director Julian Lewis said. "We design to preserve and support this energy, maintaining the ebbs and flows of these places which make our neighbourhoods unique."

What will the finished street look like?

The completed section will contain two new squares, one close to Holles Street and the other close to Duke Street. A new surface dressing will level the ground across the carriageway, erasing the kerb line between footway and road.

Trees will arrive first in "sculptural pots", East said, before crews plant them into the ground as part of the permanent scheme.

The project closes a nine-year loop. London mayor Sadiq Khan announced plans to make Oxford Street traffic-free in 2017, but Westminster Council blocked them the following year. East revealed updated renders of its vision for the final scheme earlier this month.

For practitioners, the delivery model matters as much as the milestone: interim materials — bollards, pots, planters — buy the design team two construction seasons to test layouts before the 2027 groundworks begin.