TfL chief admits Oxford Street bus problem, then quits

Sir Peter Hendy, London's Commissioner of Transport, issued on 18 June what sounded like a threat to transfer the entire Red Wall of Metal buses from Oxford Street to residential areas like Wigmore Street because people keep criticising them. He resigned a week later.

His idiosyncratic remarks emerged directly after he spoke as a Board Member of the West End Partnership (WEP), at a public presentation of WEP's Vision for the West End during which the possibility of pedestrianising Oxford Street was discussed. It appears that Sir Peter wanted to head off the pedestrianisers by telling them that he was still not prepared to consider optimising the bus route network to make it unnecessary to use Oxford Street as a rolling bus garage. 270 nearly-empty but polluting and dangerous buses drive through the pedestrian crowds on Oxford Street every hour.

WEP Transport Sub-group report, December 2014

There is no chance that Westminster Council (which chairs the  WEP) would countenance any such use of residential streets, although the WEP Transport Subgroup under TfL leadership (left) did study various similar but more limited plans according to their report of December last year. Powerful Board members include businesses (such as Oxford Street retailers), and property owners who object to TfL's commandeering of Oxford Street. It can be assumed that they invited Sir Peter onto their Board in the hope that he would come up with more constructive ideas for resolving one of the West End's major problems. 

The retailers would prefer tailored surface public transport which would deposit customers at their door between underground stations. (The current 270 buses each hour are underutilised at most times and are using Oxford Street as an arterial road to where they are needed in the suburbs). Sir Peter tried to make his straw man scheme sound sensible by imagining a bus passenger who has a cleaning job at John Lewis and would be prepared to walk from a bus stop relocated to Wigmore Street. The retailers would be more concerned about losing paying customers, not cleaners whom they are paying to be there. 

Residents are strongly opposed to buses on their residential back streets because of their bad collision record (eight pedestrians have been killed in Oxford Street in the last eight years, all by buses) and pollution. Measurements during recent bus strikes have shown that buses are responsible for most of the highly toxic and illegal NO2 pollution on Oxford Street, a silent killer. 

Pollution fell to legal levels in Oxford Street during
the January 13 bus strike (Source: LondonAir.org.uk)

Sir Peter's proposal would suit TfL because it could divide total pollution in two, reducing it to legal levels (200 micrograms per cubic metre as an hourly average) in each arm of a new Wigmore Street / Brook Street bus loop. At the same time it would, conveniently for TfL, postpone still further the optimisation of London's bus routes, fossilising the rigid and fragmented contractual arrangements of the independent bus companies.

The rational solution to Oxford Street's bus problem is flexible ticketing, as used in other capital cities, allowing passengers to change buses at no extra charge to take a quicker, indirect route. The GLA Transport Committee has been requesting this for five years. At present if you ask TfL's journey planner to plan a route from Victoria to Stoke Newington (the 73's route which includes Oxford Street), it will tell you to change at Essex Road at many times of the day even if you specify 'no changes'. If you persevere and ask for the 73 to Oxford Circus and then the same bus from there you'll find it takes much longer. With flexible ticketing passengers will themselves optimise the bus routes using their intelligence and that of their smartphone apps. This might either increase or reduce total bus company revenues, because bus companies are paid by the mile. The problem is that there would be winners and losers among the different companies which would be hard to predict (as any normal market is hard to predict). 

New York solved this problem eight years ago by absorbing bus services previously operated by many private carriers into the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Regional Bus Operations, streamlining their management functions and consolidating their management. Mayoral candidates please note.