Traffic in the West End 'must be halved by 2020'

Traders say traffic in the West End must be halved to encourage shoppers

Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Jonathan Prynn, Business Editor @JonPrynn|Clare Hutchison

8 June 2016

Traffic in the West End must be halved by 2020 to clean up the filthy air in Europe’s premier shopping district, a leading business group said today.

The New West End Company, which represents traders in Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street, said the target for “radical” reduction was vital.

Oxford Street has one of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution in the world, with concentrations recorded at above 200 micrograms per cubic metre already this year. The legal limit is 18 such episodes a year.

Chief executive Jace Tyrrell said: “Everyone recognises that air quality is one of our top issues, it is consistently bad and it has got to be addressed. Our members employ 150,000 staff in the West End, it’s about them, it’s about their customers and it’s about the reputation of London across the world.

“We’ve got Crossrail coming soon and that will be an extra 60 million trips to the West End a year. We have to look at the space available for them.

“We don’t want a solution that’s just about restricting the amount of traffic on the main routes and driving it into the residential side streets. We need to reduce, not divert.” The target was revealed in the organisation’s five-year strategy document, called West End Retail 2020. Mr Tyrrell said business, new Mayor Sadiq Khan, Transport for London and Westminster council leaders all had a key part to play in reaching the objective. More details about how it could be achieved will be revealed in a follow-up plan late next month.

But Mr Tyrrell said huge strides are already being made in small-scale trials that could be expanded to cover the whole of the West End. For example, on Bond Street the number of companies collecting waste has been cut from 47 to seven in nine months. Emissions from waste vehicles have fallen by 93 per cent and costs are down 25 per cent.

He said: “It’s a small example of what could be done across the whole of the West End and the role that business has to play.”

A separate initiative in Regent Street, led by landlord the Crown Estate, has seen brands such as Armani share electric delivery vans delivering their stock from a depot in Harlow. It has resulted in an 80 per cent drop in the number of vehicles making deliveries to the 50 participating stores and has cut the amount of carbon dioxide being belched into the street by 10 tonnes a year.

Mr Tyrrell also said he also wanted Transport for London to accelerate the introduction of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone so that all buses and taxis entering the West End are run on electric power rather than diesel by 2018.

He has been impressed by actions taken in San Francisco, where hundreds of municipal buses have been converted to operate with zero-emissions and are powered by compressed natural gas, electric motors and biofuel.

West End business leaders welcomed the initiative. Simon Thomas, chief executive of the Hippodrome casino in Leicester Square, said: “It’s a breath of fresh air to hear that an organisation representing so many key businesses is putting the reduction of pollution central to its plan.”

Councillor Philippa Roe, chairwoman of the West End Partnership, an alliance of business and public sector leaders, said: “We are coordinating investment, initiatives, and a programme of projects that are being devised and progressed by teams from WEP, Transport for London, Westminster council, Camden and the private sector.

“This includes conducting significant work, that will report back in the autumn, to look at bus and freight movements in the West End to give us detailed information that will allow us to make the investment choices needed to tackle air quality and congestion issues.”

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Traffic in the West End 'must be halved by 2020'

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