It’s only been about two weeks since London pedestrianized Oxford Street. While it’s certainly possible that more people are visiting the street purely because of its novelty, the initial reports are positive.
In the first six days after it was pedestrianized, the broader West End area saw a 13% increase in transactions on Barclays debit and credit cards.
What’s more, separate figures published by payments company Adyen show that in-store transactions across 40 different businesses on Oxford Street increased by 19% both week-over-week and year-over-year.
While the datasets remain limited, all of this is promising and, in my view, expected. Oxford Street is coming off a difficult decade, during which vacancies rose to 13.7% in 2022 and average retail rents declined from £1,100 per square foot in 2016 to £600 during the pandemic.
London is aiming, as it should, to compete with Fifth Avenue and the Champs-Élysées with this £150 million investment. This is an effective way to do that.
Photo by Bryan Brittos on Unsplash