Tactics - Save Oxford Street - Bring Back The Boulevard

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Tactics - The Bottom Up Doing

Oxford street is having an Identity Crisis. Is it a six lane highway/nightclub strip OR is it a city village main street? One has to assume, with alll the kerfuffle about late night bars and anti social behaviour, that the council and state government would be in favbour of the latter. If this is the case, what is required for Oxford Street is a MAIN STREET STRATEGY. On this page we make suggestions as to what could form part of that strategy. The sections below have not simply been plucked from the air like bad policy. They are a summary of four years worth of workshops, meetings, consultations and conversations that the Darlinghurst Business Partnership has been involved with. They represent ideas that have repeatedly come up but never been taken up. They are now on the record and they are public domain. They are intended to fuel debate, inspire action and instigate change. If you like one, please take it and make it grow.

Highway Oxford	Local Action Plans	Taylor Square	Post Office	Council Properties	Late Night Shopping	Busses	Garbage

The Six Lane Highway____						back to top
The situation on Oxford Street is a perfect example of how a policy can have exactly the opposite effect it was 'designed' for. The aim of Gateway Oxford Street was to create a pedestrian friendly Boulevard but by removing parking and creating clearways for busses, the opposite occurred. Now that busses have their own lane in peak hour, the time when pedestrians make their way up and down the street, cars can happily travel at 60kph and with parking removed, even less people stop and get out. If one looks at King Street Newtown, the community there thrives exactly because the cars are allowed to park on the main road and traffic is slow that people can live along side it and move safely through it. On Lower Oxford Street it is impossible, at times, even to have a conversation. What we suggest below might be might be contentious, but cities are simply no place for highways. If Oxford Street is to remain a Main Street as everyone seems to agree, then cars must take second place to pedestrians. In the short term the best way to achieve this would be to remove the clearways to slow traffic; the prime goal being to create a buffer between the traffic and the pedestrians. In the medium term we fully support the reinstallation of light rail up Oxford Street. This will slow traffic, bring people back due to ease of embarking and disembarking and most importantly, will make Lower Oxford crossable again. There is some thorny ground here if the long term ideology is a car free city. There is no simple solution, but as Oxford Street has shown, there are huge problems with enacting 'policy' in a piecemeal fashion. For example, limiting parking in the area has done nothing to stop car use in general, it has just meant that people keep driving through when they can't get a spot. Our position is best summed up by a quote from visionary planner Jan Gehl when he described a sustainable and liveable city as one in which a pedestrian should not have to ask permission of a car to cross the road. Note - we are not anti-car, we are pro-pedestrian.

Local Actions Plans (LAP's)____						back to top
Economically, socially and geographically, Oxford Street should be at the heart of the Inner East. While the infrastructure changes suggested about are expensive and time consuming, altering the way council's bureauocracy thinks, talks and communicates with and about Oxford Street is a quick, relatively cheap and effective place to start. This is not a culture change, this is merely the tweaking of a good strategy. 1) Either elevate Oxford Street Cultural Quarter to the status of a LAP, or fully encapsulate Darlinghurst in the 'inner east' with Paddington and Surry Hills by moving the LAP boundary down to sunny William Street.

Taylor Square____						back to top
This disaster began with the Eastern Distributor when Bourke Street was blocked off: great for Bourke, not so great for Taylor Square. The redesign by South Sydney Council was worse than a failure but they cannot be blamed. The space is wrong. It cannot be tweaked, it must be fundamentally changed. We could ask why Oxford Street got busier with the Cross City Tunnel, while Bourke turned into a nature reserve with the Eastern Distributor, but we won't. 1) Move the courts; reclaim the beautiful old sandstone buildings for public use - perhaps an art gallery with the new council One Stop/Post/Police Shop on one side. 2) Open the grassed areas to the public for daily usage and events. 3) Actually paint in a Scramble Crossing (like corner George and Park Street) while doubling the duration of the green pedestrian light. 4) Council buys the old T2 building, plants a ruddy great Morton Bay Fig on Gilligan's Island and start a weekly T-Square market.

The Post Office						back to top
We have repeatedly (read ad infinitum) stressed that the loss of the local post office was a body blow to Crown Street and Darlinghurst in general. In terms of making that short trip up the road to do your business and then lunching at the cafe next door, the relocation of the post office to number 1 Oxford Street literally removed the need for hundreds of city workers to make their way up Liverpool Street to Oxford Street, and so was one of the only conduits between CBD's shut down. The answer here lies with council. The bureauocracy of Australia Post is harder to navigate than the RTA's and so, rather than fighting franchise agreements, we need to convince the City to take the initiative and open a One Stop Shop at Taylor Square. This could contain the post shop and a police shop front.

Council Properties____						back to top
The City of Sydney is a major property owner on the north side of Lower Oxford. While it is not the habit of the DBP to get involved with wrangles between tenants and landlords, the treatment of the council tenants has been questionable to say the least. It seems that the council's property department is operating on a piecemeal basis, when they alone are in a unique position to implement a clear and decisive strategy for the future of Oxford Street. What is needed is some leadership for other landlords to follow. Council can select the 'right' tenants to help to push the business mix back in the direction of an even day/night balance.This is not as far fetched as it seems. The recent choice of American Apparel over a food business in the old Gowings Building sent a clear signal to other landlords and prospective tenants. What we need now is more of this. Council also needs to recognise the value of existing tenants, set equitable rents for them and not offer cheap short term leases to fly by night operators who compete directly with well established tenants at vastly reduced rents.

Thursday Evenings						back to top
Every morning and every evening thousands of people make their way to or from work, up Oxford Street - usually with heads down. Evenings in particular are interesting because they are the cross-over point between day and night time trading. Thursday nights especially so, due to late night shopping. The idea here - and we dont own this so if you are feeling it, please do something about it - is to activate this natural bridge between the trading cycles. 1) Waive all footpath trading license fees for Thursday between 4pm and 10pm. 2) Stage Thursday evening noodle/food market (supplied by local traders) at Taylor Square South, complete with a live accoustic band. For two reasons we suggest teepees rather than those horrid plastic stalls. The first is the horrid plastic stalls and the second is that Taylor Square South is not comfortable being so open and sparse. Filling the space about people's heads with these stalls, and projections onto them after sundown, will go a long way to creating a space that people will feel comfortable eating and drinking in. Taylor Square South is perfectly primed to host this, especially with two licensed premises abutting the space.

The Oxford Street Weekend Day Tripper						back to top
Lack of parking, excessive traffic and a 4km long main street punctuated by dead zones and closed streets means that people tend to travel past Oxford Street. Getting on and of busses is not fun at the best of times, and seeing as how every time costs money, few people do it, even if the idea crosses their mind during their trip. Oxford Street must becaome a destination again, but you can't force people, you need to pique their curiosity as they pass. We call on Council and the STA to create cheap, weekend, all-day tickets that allow people to get on and off busses that travel up Oxford Street from the city to Bondi Beach. In addition to attracting more people back to public transport, it would be a great marketing tool for both organisations, generate good media and most importantly, allow people to experience all the cool little nooks and crannies that punctuate the street.

Garbage Collection & Recycling							back to top
City of Sydney council does not currently pick up garbage or recycling from businesses even through they derive a huge chunk of their income from business and businesses pay higher rates. Businesses arrange their own collections which results in a large number of uncoordinated traffic movements at all hours of the day. This adds pollution to the air and damages roads, as well as amenity. It is also very difficult for small businesses to arrange their own recycling. Too often there is not enough space to hold the separated refuse as most companies will only pick up bails and bins, not tubs. Furthermore, most "recycling" still ends up in landfill anyway. We have called on the council to take over the collection of garbage and recycling for small and medium business. We are not asking for this service for free, although that would be nice, merely that they make it possible for small businesses to do the right thing by the environment. There is currently an internal review of waste management within council and we eagerly await the results, due in March 2009. The DBP also fully supports the idea that council create its own sustainable garbage/recycling facility to ensure that 'recycling ' actually occurs.

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