00:00On a rather grey and damp day, I am here on Oxford Street, where just 24 hours ago, this stretch
00:06was lined with London's classic black cabs and red buses, but today the scene is rather different.
00:12For the first time, almost a kilometre of one of the capital's busiest shopping streets is traffic-free, but to
00:18be honest with you, the reality on the ground is feeling a little bit underwhelming.
00:22Despite signs like these and this big banner on the ground telling people about the transformation, most pedestrians I've seen
00:29are still just dipping to the pavements, so rather than feeling like a bold new public space, right now it
00:35feels a little bit like a road that's just been closed for roadworks.
00:39One of the biggest questions is how the new restrictions are going to work for cyclists.
00:44So the idea is to keep cyclists off this stretch of road altogether, but from what I've seen this morning,
00:49that doesn't necessarily mean they're getting off their bikes.
00:53I've watched cyclists being told to dismount. I'm also seeing cyclists just continue to ride through, and because the road
01:00is closed, many cyclists are just shifting onto the pavements to ride their bikes instead, which raises questions over the
01:06effectiveness of these restrictions in the first place.
01:09There's also another question around e-bikes. At the moment, it doesn't seem like there's any kind of geofencing preventing
01:16bikes from providers like Lime, Boy and Forest from being ridden through this area, which does raise concerns about how
01:23the new restrictions will work in practice and how they will be enforced.
01:26Now, this is only day one, and the longer-term vision is for this street to become a much more
01:32attractive public space with green spaces and places for people to gather for social and cultural events.
01:38But right now, based on my first impression, it doesn't quite feel like the landmark transformation that we've been promised.
01:46The big question is whether removing the traffic from Oxford Street is enough to bring it back to life, and
01:52whether this space will work as intended for the people who actually use it.
01:56The long term, in which I don't move from cách, I think throw it back to life.
01:57But what changed is that there are pr parentção that has helped people the whole countries do and practitioners across
01:57the whole??
