Closing a major thoroughfare in Cardiff city centre to traffic from 8pm until 4am on Friday and Saturday nights has significantly reduced violent crime and improved road safety.

South Wales Police have reported that between January and March of this year, there were six violent offences, compared with 66 between October and December last year.

This follows the imposition of the ban on night-time traffic, which required bus services to be diverted. Cardiff Council, the highway authority, imposed the temporary road traffic order following concerns about the numbers of people spilling out on to the street from pubs and clubs in the area.

Cardiff Bus had reported that the introduction of the smoking ban had forced smokers on to Greyfriars Road’s footways, leading to members of the public walking on the carriageway, which the council had described as ‘a dangerous scenario’.

The bus lane on Greyfriars Road is temporarily converted into a taxi rank, with a taxi marshal from South Wales Police on site to supervise people getting into and out of taxis.

Chief inspector Steve Furnham said: ‘We were concerned that several thousand people were spilling out on to pavements not designed to take them. Closing the road gives people more space to move around.

‘You don’t get people banging into one another, so you don’t get the sparks which start public disorder.’ A spokesman for Cardiff council said the closures had also been effective in improving road safety, as well as public order, which was why the experimental closure, which had been extended to Thursday nights, would be made permanent.