Traffic-free zones one solution as cities choked by traffic and fumes
COLUMNIST
IN THE battle to make our cities more liveable and less toxic, drastic action has to be taken. The “wall of red buses” habitually stop-starting their way through London’s Oxford Street are as famous as the landmark shops and buildings which line it.
Not only are these buses – and the other traffic which snarls the route – as much a draw for tourists as anything, they are also contributing to the chronic pollution which is affecting the health of Londoners every day.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, is planning to pedestrianise at least part of the famous street – the shopping area – under measures to be implemented by next December.
A half-mile section of the road, between Oxford Street and Orchard Street, will be traffic free.
“Our plans will make the area substantially cleaner and safer for everyone, creating one of the finest public spaces in the world,” says Khan.
The images of a gleaming, trafficfree Oxford Street look exciting enough (like all artists’ impressions, they’re imagined on a bright, warm summer’s day, rather than a wet, cold, dark, miserable November afternoon) – and along with other moves being made by Khan, is another progressive step in making a polluted, traffic-burdened city more pleasant.
In a city the size of London, the pedestrianisation of a part of one street is a small step – but the fact it is Oxford Street, one of its most famous and popular, that’s been chosen to be the first, perhaps of many, is the salient point.
Other cities around the world have long started to reclaim their streets for walkers and cyclists.
In New York, pedestrianisation in Manhattan and elsewhere has been happening for a number of years.
It’s making it a more attractive place to live, work and visit.
When Times Square was partpedestrianised in 2009 many New Yorkers were aghast. Beeping traffic is as much a part of the energy that makes New York New York as anything.
But in the years since, it’s been seen as a success. And other cities are removing cars from famous routes.
In Paris, mayor Anne Hidalgo wants more traffic restricted as she aims to halve the number of private cars on the roads.
A 1km stretch of road along the river from Place de la Concorde and Pont Royal is scheduled for closure.
The city also wants to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles from the city centre by 2030.
Oxford aims to phase out polluting vehicles from its city centre by 2020.
Sydney, Melbourne, Boston, Vancouver, Copenhagen, Madrid, Oslo are other global cities pioneering the move to pedestrianisation.
There are compelling environmental and health reasons for doing this.
The Royal College of Physicians suggests that there are around 40,000 early deaths in the UK each year because of outdoor air pollution – cars being the main culprits.
And yet in Wales we fiddle around the edges – our town, city and government leaders appear too feeble in imagination to see how beneficial to the population and the future our urban areas’ pedestrianisation could be.
A recent report found that socalled clean air zones covering the country all have illegally high levels of air pollution.
And there’s been little done since the few decades after shopping zones were pedestrianised.
How about part-pedestrianising, or creating car-free days, on certain other routes?
What about congestion charges or bans on polluting vehicles?
In Cardiff, for example, why couldn’t traffic-free Sundays or even weekends be introduced on streets like Albany Road, City Road, Crwys Road and Cowbridge Road East to see what it’s like in these places without cars, buses and taxis? And to see how that affects other routes in the road network?
An annual car-free day in the capital’s centre has been experimented with – but little else has happened since the controversial pedestrianisation of High Street and most of St Mary Street.
What about outlying parts of the capital, such as Rhiwbina and Whitchurch, and thinking how we can create better places to live and enjoy – without cars?
Of course, to make things like this work there need to be integrated transport solutions – which think not only about those on foot, but cyclists and potential public transport users too.
The metro projects in north Wales, Swansea Bay and south-east Wales could help provide that solution. They are, though, taking a frustratingly long time to move beyond the planning and discussion phase into delivery.
We are hamstrung by the lack of town or city mayor, an executive making visionary decisions about our urban landscapes.
We are hamstrung too by the lack of regional strategy when it comes to joining up the thinking about how we commute.
Maybe most of all we are hamstrung in Wales by a lack of financial commitment towards the improvement of urban centres for the benefit of pedestrians – ploughing money into roads for the benefit of drivers and traffic flows when maybe instead we should be thinking more about how to create greener and less car-centric towns and cities.