It is easy to understand why the developers behind the new Westgate — and indeed John Lewis which will be providing the flagship store — badly want to see Queen Street pedestrianised.


And there is good reason, too, why they should expect to see it happen.
Oxfordshire County Council has been moving towards the pedestrianisation of the busy shopping street over years.

Five years ago bus stops were taken out, pavements widened and bus numbers reduced. When the county’s £985,000 Transform Oxford project to pedestrianise much of the city centre became a casualty of spending cuts, the £400m Westgate development was seen by the council’s leader, Ian Hudspeth, as a one-off opportunity to press ahead.

Pedestrianisation is warmly supported by Oxford City Council and no doubt many thousands of shoppers, particularly those with young children, uneasy about the existing halfway house situation when it comes to buses.
It is not difficult to imagine the anger and soul-searching that would follow a fatality involving a bus on this busy shopping street.

But many will be unsettled to learn that after years of talks the other key player, the Oxford Bus Company, remains far from happy. Its submission to the city council, in fact, shows just how far we are from agreement about how buses should be re-routed.


With 50 per cent of people said to travel into the city already by bus, it is an important issue. But it should be remembered that the whole success of the new development depends on finding fast and efficient ways of bringing many more people into the city by bus — and for a better shopping experience.

The list of possible consequences of taking buses out of Queen Street is depressingly long: increased congestion, longer bus journeys, increased fares, long walks to bus stops, increased pollution, crowded kerbs and safety risks.


The company is supported by Oxford Civic Society, which fears “intimidatingly high bus flows in the streets around the development”.
Even the deputy leader of Oxfordshire County Council, Rodney Rose, says that in his view we should be exploring ways to keep buses in Queen Street.


Many will have thought that we had passed the point of first principles, with discussions focusing on details like kerb sizes and bus stop positions.
The layout of Oxford’s historic centre, the level of bus use and the sheer number of people who want to come here, means the issue of bus routes was always going to be uniquely complex for a city of Oxford’s size. But with the passing of every month, the pressure to find answers is going to intensify.


Not just the Westgate, but the prosperity of the whole city centre depends on getting it right.