shoppers spending 20% more than they did last year.

£100million shopping bonanza as Oxford St bans cars for one day
Mark Blunden, Evening Standard
03.12.07

West End Christmas shoppers defied worries of a global credit crunch as they embarked on the area's first £100 million spending spree in a day.

Up to a million people descended on central London's premier shopping streets when traffic was banned from Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street on Saturday.

It was the third pre-Christmas car-free event, but the first occasion that all three major shopping thoroughfares have been pedestrianised at the same time.

Shoppers spent an estimated £20 million more than during the same event last year in spite of fears of falling house prices and soaring mortgage bills.

Retail analysts said that wealthy foreigners accounted for a large slice of trade on Shop West End VIP (Very Important Pedestrians) Day as they invested in furs and jewels.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standa...day/article.do

Holy majolie! 100 million pounds!! And I thought I was getting fat....

...What Philly's Chestnut Street Looks Like With No Cars

__________________
“Man who run in front of car get tired.”

Friday, September 18, 1998
Levy wants movement on Chestnut dead zone

Philadelphia Business Journal - by Thomas J. Walsh

• Print Article
• Email Article
• Reprints
• RSS Feeds
• Add to Del.icio.us
• Digg This

Related News

• MTA awards two contracts [Los Angeles]

Paul Levy, head of the Center City District, used his latest newsletter to address the need for Philadelphia's Streets Department to set a schedule for the bidding and renovation of the Chestnut Street Transitway.
The transitway is a federally funded project that closed Chestnut from 18th Street east to Eighth Street to traffic other than buses in 1976.
"I think there are a lot of people who are engaging in a series of fantasies about what to do," Levy said last week. "We need a clear mission."
While debate has centered on what traffic patterns will be once cars are allowed back on Chestnut, Levy wrote in his latest CCD newsletter that "we need to devote more attention to the primary reason for this undertaking: to stimulate private investment and fill vacancies with tenants who will enliven the street 24 hours a day.
"If we continue to consider this only as a transportation and streetscape project, we replay the errors of the 1970s."
Rather than "go the whole distance," Levy wrote that Chestnut Street never developed the cafe culture and pedestrian-friendly, inexpensive public transportation needed to make such a project work.
"We've had the worst of all worlds: one-way transit service by day; large, noisy vehicles; virtually no transit at night; and no legal parking. Should we be surprised that while restaurants thrive on Walnut Street and outdoor cafes flourish on Chestnut Street in Old City, there is not a single evening dining location on the transitway? Should we be surprised at a 40 to 60 percent vacancy rate on the upper floors of older buildings?"
Levy said that a quarter century of experience tells him the city is not prepared to do what it needs to do in order to make the original vision of the Chestnut Street Transitway -- put forth in 1963 -- a reality.
"That said," Levy wrote, "we would not do wrong if we pursued a simpler version of Chestnut Street as an eastbound Walnut Street."
Along with the physical changes and return of traffic, private investment could be attracted by a tax increment finance district, Levy said, similar to one established for Chicago's State Street.
The timing of Levy's letter was good -- the success of the State Street project was echoed in a Wall Street Journal article just last week.
Levy in the wings

Levy, who is also the executive director of the Central Philadelphia Development Corp., has been named chairman-elect of the International Downtown Association.
In existence since the mid-'50s, the group consists of "400 or 500 members" around the globe, primarily in the United States and Canada, according to Levy. But other countries represented include the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Sweden and The Netherlands.

__________________
"

There is a huge difference between limiting traffic for a one day special event as shown by the OP and restricting a street to busses only as in Transitway.

In one case it is a special event a unique opportunity in the year for shoppers to flood the street

The other is limiting traffic to busses which means the street remains perilous for pedestrians but less active overall and this is 24/7

there is no real comparison here

I was in London after thanksgiving a few years ago and seriously, the shopping streets were so insanely crowded you could hardly walk on them at all. it made New York look tame. the sidewalks are wide, too. Closing the street to traffic makes sense, maybe people could actually move!

Yes but you have to close the streets to ALL vehicular traffic no bus only stuff ... either cars, buses and what not can go down the street or they can't and none of that only closed from like 9-3 or 12-6 every other Tuesday, make a pedestrian shopping street or just leave it open to traffic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/billhd/145578340/

http://www.galway.net/tmp/gpics20000624/

__________________
"All of this will not be finished in the first one hundred days, nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."

~John F. Kennedy

exactly.

You really think we have the density to pull this off?

Citing London and NYC?

The population density is 4,761 people per square kilometre, more than ten times that of any other British region. In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 17th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city.[71] London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.[72]


New York is the most populous city in the United States, with an estimated 2005 population of 8,213,839 (up from 7.3 million in 1990).[56] This amounts to about 40% of New York State's population and a similar percentage of the metropolitan regional population. Over the last decade the city's population has been increasing and demographers estimate New York's population will reach between 9.2 and 9.5 million by 2030.[79]
New York's two key demographic features are its population density and cultural diversity. The city's population density of 26,403 people per square mile (10,194/km²), makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000.[80] Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile (25,846/km²), highest of any county in the United States.[81][82]







The median income for a household in the city was $30,746, and the median income for a family was $37,036. Males had a median income of $34,199 versus $28,477 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,509. About 18.4% of families and 22.9% of the population were below the poverty line



As of the census² of 2000, there were 1,517,550 people, 590,071 households, and 352,272 families residing in the city. The population density was 4,337.3/km² (11,233.6/mi²). There were 661,958 housing units at an average density of 1,891.9/km² (4,900.1/mi²). As of the 2004 Census estimations, there were 1,463,281 people, 658,799 housing units, and the racial makeup of the city was 45.0% White, 43.2% African American, 5.5% Asian, 0.3% Native American, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 5.8% from other races, and 2.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.5% of the population.









I don't know if there's enough stores there to generate the traffic needed to fill the street.






Close 2nd from Market to Dock on Fri/Sat Nights.

Close South from 5th to Front on Fri/Sat Nights.


Ya cut off access for Walnut.. ans you kill the stores and cripple the side streets.


Cut the grid up and it adjusts...the traffic doesn't leave...it just uses other streets.

__________________
"

When I lived in London, I had NO desire to drive at all. Nada, zip....and I love driving (esp cool right hand drive cars) Philly traffic is a breeze in comparison.