On Thu, 25 Nov 2010, Paul Corfield wrote:

It has been proven time and again in provincial cities that if you
pedestrianise and shove buses out to the periphery of the central area
and impose a walking premium to and from stops then the bus network
loses patronage. You therefore weaken the entire network and this will
means cuts to services and / on increased fares. Why on earth should
the viability and attractiveness of the bus network be sacrificed to
please a few shop owners?

You've gone wrong! This would be for the benefit of people using Oxford
Street - like me - not the shop owners. If it also benefits the
shopkeepers, great, but the point of it is to make the space more suitable
for human use.

The idea that the use of public spaces by people should be impinged on for
the benefit of transport networks is an utterly lunatic case of putting
the cart before the horse.

tom

--
Virtually everything you touch has been mined. -- Prof Keith Atkinson