PRIVATE cash will be used to transform Broad Street with a piazza, under a new trust made up of senior city figures.

The opening of Oxford’s new £80m Weston Library in the spring reignited calls for removal of vehicles to create a public space by its iconic university buildings.

Now Broad Street is to be the subject of a major fundraising effort to create a new piazza, relying on private benefactors rather than public finance.

The Broad Street Trust has now been registered as a charity to “preserve, protect and improve the physical layout in the historic area.”

It aims to produce plans for “a pedestrian priority plaza towards the eastern end of Broad Street” to “enhance the unique space and stimulate public interest in the city.”

Oxford City Council leader Bob Price is a trustee, along with the chairman of Oxford Preservation Trust, Prof Roger Ainsworth, who is Master of St Catherine’s College and a Pro Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University.

Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, senior executive of the Bodleian Libraries, completes the trio of trustees.

Mr Price said: “The trust has been formed to provide a vehicle to raise funds from non-public sources to create a pedestrian-friendly piazza between the Weston Library and the Clarendon Building.

“It would extend for short distances up Parks Road, Holywell and Catte Street.

“We feel that this would substantially improve the appearance and the usage of this important space and begin the process of traffic calming that has been an aspiration for that area for many years.”

Lead architect behind the Weston Library Jim Eyre said the refurbishment of the New Bodleian Library should act as a catalyst for improvements in Broad Street, with “the status quo simply not good enough”. Mr Eyre, director of WilkinsonEyre Architects, said: “The formation of the new Broad Street Trust is a significant step forward in realising this incredibly important project.”

He will address Oxford Preservation Trust’s annual general meeting on “the new opportunity for Broad Street” on Wednesday.

OPT director Debbie Dance said: “It has taken us more than 10 years to get to this point. Back in 2004 we championed the plan for Broad Street that was produced by Kim Wilkie Associates.

“The success of the opening of the Weston Library opens up new opportunities and takes the vision ever closer to happening, so that we can all enjoy one of Europe’s greatest urban spaces as it should be seen and enjoyed. ”

The study by Kim Wilkie Associates proposed paving the eastern end of Broad Street to create a “ University Square” at the head of a sequence of pedestrian spaces from St Mary the Virgin Church to the Weston Library. The study was endorsed by both councils, English Heritage, OPT and Oxford University.

The Garfield Weston Foundation donated £25m in support of the library’s renovation with Julian Blackwell, the president of Blackwell’s Bookshop which neighbours the New Bodleian, donating more than £6m.

Mr Price said improvements beyond eastern Broad Street would depend on Oxfordshire County Council’s Oxford Transport Strategy and “other more extensive funding sources.”

While a reorganisation of traffic patterns in 1992 ended Broad Street’s days as a congested “rat run”, there remain concerns about volume of traffic generated by car park spaces and tourist buses.

Traders, however, expressed fears that complete pedestrianisation could result in problems with deliveries.