Oxford Street loses its traffic in the second half of October

One is obliged to note that London has been discussing this since the 1970s. It happens next month.

What closes, and when

The traffic-free stretch runs from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street — roughly 0.9 km, and it includes Oxford Circus. It goes traffic-free in the second half of October 2026.

Closed to buses, taxis, private hire vehicles, cycles, e-scooters and pedicabs. Not a partial scheme, and not one with a cyclists' exemption.

The Oxford Street Development Corporation took on planning powers for the area on 10 August 2026. Four north–south crossing points are retained, and two new public squares are planned, though their locations have not yet been revealed.

The part that will cause the most correspondence

Excluding cycles from a pedestrianisation scheme is, one suspects, going to prove rather more contentious than excluding cars. The reasoning is straightforward — a crowd walking at its own pace in all directions is not a surface that mixes well with anything travelling at fifteen miles an hour — but it is a genuine loss of an east–west route, and the alternatives are not obviously good.

What happens to the buses is the real question

Oxford Street's bus corridor is not a convenience; for a great many people it is the only way across the West End that does not involve stairs. Those routes must go somewhere, and Wigmore Street and Great Marlborough Street are not generous.

A transition scheme comes first, with permanent changes at the end of 2027. The interval is the point: it is a fourteen-month opportunity to discover what one has got wrong while it is still cheap to correct.