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London bans cars for a day in the fight against air pollution
- tristanperry 7y agoThere's a self-build TV show in the UK called 'Grand Designs' that had a great episode[0] whereby their children were suffering badly with allergies (even being hospitalised at times). They stayed within London (albeit moving to a slightly better area for pollution) but built their house with filtered air systems and low VOC products in mind - and their children's symptoms improved dramatically. It's concerning how big of a role air pollution seems to be playing, considering it doesn't seem to be a mainstream concern. [0] - https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home-garden/interiors/design-news/grand-designs-healthy-house-built-for-kids-with-lifethreatening-allergies-is-a-wakeup-call-for-all-a124476.html https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/home-garden/interiors/des...
- toothandtail 7y agoWouldn't it be better for a) their children and b) the environment (extra materials being used in the house) if they just moved out of London?
- majewsky 7y agoFor their children, perhaps. For the environment, probably not. Moving to a suburb means more air pollution from the longer commute.
- alex_duf 7y agoIt depends on if you can get a job outside of the capital right?
- IAmEveryone 7y agoHigh-density urban living is far better for the environment than rural. People usually live in less space, and with far less outside surfaces, reducing energy usage for heating and cooling. Distance to work, shopping, and other destinations is shorter, and use of public transport is far higher. Far less land is wasted on manicured single-family lawns rarely used. Density also allows sharing of rarely used manufactured goods between a neighbors or via renting (power tools, washing machines, even cars).
- butteroverflow 7y agoRelated podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/episode-22-joe-walston-on-conservation-urbanization-and-the-way-we-live-on-earth/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/11/12/epis...
- pjc50 7y agoWe're back to "that's where all the well paying jobs are"; given that they spent £750k on the land before even building the house, they probably can't maintain that lifestyle with a non-London job, and commuting in from greater distance is pretty gruelling.
- megaremote 7y agoAnd I bet they still drove. Big SUVs if they are like most families.
- gambiting 7y agoI know it's super fashionable to hate on driving, but there's a reason why people drive - because they value their own time. I don't live in London but in a large city in the North, and when driving my commute is about 20 minutes, vs. at least an hour on public transport. Add kids to the mix and if you have to drop off your dearest at 8am but also be at work at/around 8am, then it might simply be impossible to do it on public transport in the right timeframe. I'm trying to switch away from driving as much as I can nowadays, but there's a reason why people do it, especially with kids that have to be places. Ultimately, I don't think it's the issue with driving - it's the issue with cars being polluting. My next car is definitely going to be electric if possible.
- butteroverflow 7y agoWhat gets me is how entitled many drivers are. I know a lot of people who drive instead of walking every single time, even when the destination is not more than 200 meters away. Almost every day I see drivers parked on the side of the road, who, when they need to get to the other side of the road, get in their car and drive. Holy shit, the road is like 6 meters wide, and and crosswalk is never far away. How lazy can they be? A lot of them find it too complicated to shut their engines when they're waiting for somebody, or when they go inside a store. They don't listen to music, they're not using AC (all windows are open), the weather is fine. This can only be explained by entitlement and laziness.
- gambiting 7y agoWell yes, I think can both agree that this kind of behaviour is gross and unacceptable.
- fyfy18 7y agoAt least in the UK, the highway code requires you to switch off your engine when you are stationary for a prolonged period of time. The fine is only £20 though, so I doubt it's really enforced.
- zimpenfish 7y agoAlready demonstrated to dramatically drop pollution on e.g. Ride100 days when large sections of London are car free. 2017 Ride100, https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic-improvement-alongside-ridelondon-route/ https://cyclingindustry.news/air-quality-sees-drastic-improv... 2018 Marathon, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon-figures-show-massive-89-per-cent-drop-in-air-pollution-a3821566.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-marathon-figur...
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoI was thinking of running one of these in our garden - just to get an idea of how bad it is https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate-matter-sensor-with-cable#description https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pms5003-particulate-matte...
- dia80 7y agoI don't think it's that bad in your garden... I ran a foobot at home when we had our son. Air quality in the house was good a mile or two from central london and a few hundred meters from a big road. Looking at the pollution maps the pollution is extremely concentrated along big roads and even a short distance (10s of meters) away it's not so bad.
- arethuza 7y agoWhen we lived in the centre of Edinburgh (which probably isn't even that polluted compared to London) I was amazed at how dirty the white paintwork on windows would get in relatively short time periods. Now we live out in a rural area and its very noticeable how cleaner windows and paintwork are - the same also applies to our lungs!
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago>>> I don't think it's that bad in your garden... I ran a foobot You know a part of me did think you were about to say you had been monitoring the air in my garden, and given Facebook, Snowden, Russia, NSA and various Acts of Parliament I would not have been that surprised by one more person watching me :-)
- amirathi 7y agoCan someone attest to accuracy of PMS5003? P.S - These are pretty cheap on AliExpress - http://bit.ly/2XoW0is http://bit.ly/2XoW0is
- edejong 7y agoAlright, after having done some research on effective, long-term measurement of air quality, I am here to give you some bad news. Your sensors are going to break. Depending on the environment and the mode of operation of the sensor, you'll see between a one month and one year lifespan. Why? Exactly because of the thing you want to measure: dust, oil particulates, water vapour and chemical reactions will quickly deteriorate the accuracy of the sensors. To properly protect them you will need at least a moisture trap and some kind of air pump to get a constant flow of air through your sensor. You most likely also want to filter out large particulates (if you're interested in sub 2.5 micrometer measurements). That said, you can [1] get quite accurate readings from the sensors within their specified operation environment (sub 80% Relative Humidity). [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/2/41/pdf-vor https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/2/41/pdf-vor
- the_mitsuhiko 7y agoAround the same time as Madrid stops its low emission zone: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new-rightwing-council-suspends-low-emissions-zone https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/18/madrid-new-rig...
- indalo 7y agowhat even is the motivation for stopping something like that? article describes it as very successful. so sad.
- Hamuko 7y agoWas it actually popular?
- otikik 7y agoYep.
- CannisterFlux 7y agoMadrid elected a right-wing local government in the recent May elections. The parties involved promised this as part of their electoral campaigns. Car drivers who live on the outskirts and had to enter the central part of the city were furious about the banning of vehicles, even though it was for the greater good. It's a crying shame because Madrid has good public transport. It needs more investment to keep up with increasing demand, and all the left-wing parties had that in their election manifestos. Now the local government will be "investing" in cars, which benefits the few and harms us all.
- IAmEveryone 7y agoCulture wars. It’s ridiculous what people start opposing once the other side starts liking it. See, for example, those rednecks manipulating their trucks in the US South to spew as much soot as possible.
- Proven 7y agoAlso known as “low business activity zone”. If you totally destroy economic activity it is possible to achieve a 100% reduction in human-generated CO2 emissions. Maybe we should give it a try?
- reallydontask 7y agoIt's always interesting/concerning when I blow my nose after a day in London: there is a lot of black residue in the snot. apologies for the disgusting picture
- butteroverflow 7y agoSame thing here, except I live a few thousand kilometers away from London. When I am too lazy to wash the windows for a month or two, the next rag goes straight to the trash bin -- it's so black and soaked with soot you can't really clean it afterwards. It would be nice to see the inside of the lungs of someone who spent a life here.
- tomatocracy 7y agoA lot of the air quality problem isn't cars though - it's also things like construction equipment and just sheer number of people passing through, especially in enclosed spaces. The London underground has some of the worst pollution in the capital, particularly in terms of particulates and bacteria. Anecdotally you might notice eg after holding the handrails on some of the escalators that your hand comes back black. There's a famous statistic quoted that a 20 minute journey on the Northern Line is as bad for you as smoking a cigarette. There's an interesting article on this effect here: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/featureis-the-air-on-london-underground-fit-to-breathe-5918758/ https://www.railway-technology.com/features/featureis-the-ai...
- alex_duf 7y agoThis especially true if you take the tube, and heavily varies depending on the line. Victoria line and Nothern lines are especially bad. If you stand at one hand of the platform, you can see some weird "mist" when looking at the opposite side. That's just a high concentration of PM2.5 and PM10, and that's what causes the black snot. It's been shown the pollution level in the tube is 30 times worst than the worst street in london. [1] I moved out of the centre of london and commute by train partly for that reason. Life's short, let's not make it shorter. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london-underground-air-pollution-report-concerns-northern-line-particulates https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/09/london-under...
- Jonnax 7y agoThe Great Smog of London in 1952 was a 4 day smog that potentially killed 12,000 people. [1] Today things are much better but living in pretty much any city around the world means that you will exposed to higher pollution. Reading the stats like below [2], it's always shocking to me that all politicians who live in cities aren't demanding change. " Worldwide ambient air pollution accounts for: 29% of all deaths and disease from lung cancer 17% of all deaths and disease from acute lower respiratory infection 24% of all deaths from stroke 25% of all deaths and disease from ischaemic heart disease 43% of all deaths and disease from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease" It's good that developments like electric cars, trains etc, mean that power generation can be centralized. Since even a fuel burning plant is more efficient than a car's engine. And there's the ability to use things like wind, tidal, nuclear, geothermal generation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London [2] https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/ambient/health-impacts/en/
- buro9 7y agoIt will be worth taking a snapshot of a Sunday via https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx and comparing to the no car day. It's a shame a week day was not selected, but it would be a bigger shame to have this be a once a year promotional day rather than part of a learning exercise towards reduced pollution in London. Another link of note would be https://cleanair.london/ https://cleanair.london/ which brings together many of the resources that document the current air quality and either proposes or tracks the policies that may address it.
- pro_zac 7y ago"Car Free Day on Sunday, 22 September 2019" https://londoncarfreeday.com/ https://londoncarfreeday.com/ Couldn't find the date on the paywalled site.
- Ray_Atreyu 7y agoThanks, I was looking for it for ages
- Proven 7y agoMeaningless. It’s essentially a form of psychological warfare against the remaining drivers
- jarym 7y agoI agree with trying to reduce the number of cars in a city is a great goal for congestion, safety and pollution. BUT Has anyone seen what it costs to get around on the tube? Or the ASTRONOMICAL costs of train tickets if you live just outside the capital? It costs me £8 to park my electric car in London and perhaps 40-60 minutes to drive there. A train takes 30 minutes but costs almost £30 for a return ticket. How is that reasonable? That ticket for ‘public’ transport is a huge chunk of ones salary; and that’s not even adding the cost of the tube into the equation.
- rocgf 7y agoThe cost of trains in the UK is ridiculous. My employer once paid £320 for a return ticket from Manchester to London.
- celticninja 7y agoI pay that fortnightly. Although I can usually get it for £220 with advance notice.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoAU$400 per fortnight for train tickets! Astonishing. No one one in fifty Briton's live in Australia.
- tigershark 7y agoMmm.. I just got a return ticket London Glasgow for something like 90£. How is it so much more expensive for Manchester (considering that my train went through Manchester and is much closer than Glasgow)?
- maccard 7y agoI've done Edinburgh to London a few times, and it's been >£200 each time
- 7y ago
- bbcfake 7y agoThanks to sadistic khan for this effort :)
- raverbashing 7y agoI'm going to be honest, London's pollution can be felt (and seen) in one's airways. And it's a bit "different" than other polluted cities. I don't know why is it so severe. Old cars? Trucks/Buses? Factories? High humidity?
- vfclists 7y agoThe amount of political posturing and grandstanding which goes in London is simply over the top. There are too many politicians seeking attention for dubious causes. The fact is that pollution in the 70s and 80s was much worse and we are still living here. Traffic in London has greatly reduced over the years. So where are these pollution concerns coming from? The amount eco posturing is just way over the top.
- adrianN 7y agoPollution concerns are coming from an improved understanding how air pollution affects people. We also used to put asbestos in everything and eventually stopped doing that even though people weren't dropping like flies.
- tempodox 7y agoAlthough it demonstrably reduces pollution levels, I don't see it go much further. Too many of us are obviously willing to pay any price for the ability to sit in our own tin can while producing smog and traffic jams. Even when not in use, cars are a massive waste of space that clogs our cities. Until we find something that's at the same time ridiculously much cheaper, less wasteful and less toxic, we will stay stuck, clogged, jammed and suffocating.