Letters to the editor: Sorting out Oxford Street’s traffic

 
Transport chief: Sir Peter Hendy (Picture: Daniel Hambury)
22 June 2015
WEST END FINAL

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It’s unbelievable that Transport Commissioner Sir Peter Hendy concludes that closing Oxford Street to buses, and sending them down “back roads, such as Wigmore Street”, is a sensible solution in addressing the “world’s highest recorded concentration of harmful gas nitrogen dioxide” [June 18].

I’d suggest Sir Peter gets one of his 400-plus transport managers to do an occupancy audit on the 270 buses an hour that travel down Oxford Street and record passenger numbers, and then timetable a more sensible frequency to meet demand.

I’m only a humble taxi driver but even I can see that if he restricted buses by 25-30 per cent during the day nobody would notice. Even a 50 per cent reduction would still provide ample frequency and seats, with a pro-rata reduction in harmful gases.
Barry Hann

If re-routing buses down Wigmore Street is the answer to improving air quality in Oxford Street, then the West End Partnership is asking the wrong question. Why has nobody suggested electric buses — not hybrids but all-electric? Even better, a tram. Oxford Street is ideal for this — straight and wide. No pollution, no noise. What more could you ask? Buses and taxis crawling along belching diesel fumes is not the future for central London.
Mark Penfold

What about incorporating a series of two-way travelators along Oxford Street — similar to those we’re all used to at airports?

There would be gaps every 50 metres or so to allow shoppers and workers to cross and to cater for traffic intersections. Displaced bus routes that couldn’t be diverted could end or restart from hubs at Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road and pick up any passengers not able to use Crossrail.
Richard Mutton

The need to reduce the number of buses in Oxford Street is not disputed. However, a bus service is vital for any disabled person wishing to shop there — indeed, the existing service needs to be improved by reducing the distance between some stops. The Tube is not presently an acceptable alternative, nor will Crossrail be.

A bus shuttle service along the full length of Oxford Street would suffice — and it would no doubt be appreciated by other shoppers too.
Terence Jones

At last the Mayor and TfL are going to tackle the filthy air and wall of buses that make Oxford Street an increasingly unpleasant place to shop. The resistance to taking action on the toll of death and injuries, the pollution and the miserable, crowded pedestrian environment has been mystifying. Londoners, who live, work, visit and shop in the area, can at last look forward to a world-class street environment.
Caroline Russell, candidate for Green Party mayoral selection

Church shootings were a terrorist act

Dylann Roof is alleged to have murdered nine black people in a crazed attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roof was a known white supremacist who wore the flag of the racist states of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa as a badge of his twisted creed.

The media coverage of the atrocity he seemingly perpetrated is instructive.

Roof has not been called a “terrorist”. He has not been called an “extremist”. I am not aware of calls for local “community leaders” who share Roof’s ethnicity to denounce his actions. His “culture” has not been invoked or identified as the motivation behind his alleged crime.

And there has been no attempt to project collective guilt for his alleged crime onto that part of the population who share the same ethnicity as him.

Of course not.

That would be stupid and irrational — and it only happens when a Muslim carries out a crime.
Sasha Simic

What should we do about Parliament?

Your report on the possible closure of the Houses of Parliament for six years [June 18] will make many people think we could do without the institution completely for that period. Let’s have a break from acts, regulations, permits, licences and especially EU restrictions, and live happily without being pushed around.
Stephen Humphrey

William Morris turned the Palace of Westminster into a store for manure in his brilliant Utopian novel News from Nowhere but might I suggest an alternative use? With a huge shortage of school places in the capital, the site would make an ideal school. The committee rooms are perfect-sized classrooms, Westminster Hall the finest assembly room imaginable and the debating chambers could be used for instilling debating skills and confidence in Britain’s brightest and best pupils.

So many state schools are in appalling condition, not least when compared with their much more solid and non-prefabricated equivalents in France or the US. The creation of a national selective school on the site could be something the building, Parliament and the nation could take utmost pride in. It would also set an example to the rest of the world that education is the highest law.
Roger Lewis

Folly of selling the right to a pension

Anthony Hilton is quite right about the new pensions regime [Business, June 18] — from the point of view of an economist and humanitarian, it is bad news that 60,000 people have sold their right to a pension.

But a politician will see things quite differently. The money raised from these sales will, for the most part, go into the consumer economy, with a consequent benefit to the Exchequer. True, in the longer term, there will inevitably be problems since it is unlikely that the state retirement pension on its own will provide enough to live on. But this may be supplemented, as Mr Hilton foresees, by payments for mis-selling.

I am on Mr Hilton’s side in the matter — but we are not the ones in power.
David Culver

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