Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), poly(ethylene terephthalate-co-4,4'-bibenzoate) (PETBB55), and poly(ethylene 2,6-naphthalate) (PEN) were cold-drawn to achieve uniform extension without crystallization or stress whitening, and oxygen transport properties were studied at temperatures from 10 to 40 degreesC. Correlation of oxygen solubility and polymer specific volume made it possible to consider the oriented polyester as a one-phase densified glass. Orientation was viewed as decreasing the amount of excess-hole free volume and bringing the nonequilibrium polymer glass closer to the equilibrium condition. Between 10 and 40 degreesC, the amount of excess-hole free volume in PET decreased as the polymer approached the glass transition temperature. In contrast, temperature changes in this range had little effect on the excess-hole free volume in PETBB55 and PEN, which were well below their glass transition temperature. Gas diffusion was viewed as discrete jumps of the oxygen molecule between holes of excess-free volume. The jump length was extracted from the activation energy for diffusion according to a channel-formation model. The result agreed well with the hole spacing estimated from a simple lattice model using the hole density reported in the literature. Extending the lattice model to estimate the mean excess-free volume hole radius from the fractional free volume resulted in good correlation with the hole radius obtained from positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.