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London Ultra Low Emission Zone cuts toxic air pollution by a third
- Havoc 7y agoGood. London air is shockingly bad at times. I live much further out with good air and randomly decided to go jogging while in London. Somehow jogging makes the fumes much more noticable
- growlist 7y agoTry cycling on Marylebone Road for a real choker!
- tim333 7y agoAs a ULEZ resident, very good, onward and upwards. I hope city centre traffic will go all electric one day. Incidentally I got a proposal to vote on the other day proposing changing Park Lane southbound into park land with cafes which I think would be nice. (https://www.westminster.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mayfair_neighbourhood_plan_compressed_version.pdf https://www.westminster.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mayfair_n... p32)
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoGiven that Park Lane seems populated exclusively by empty investment houses any life would be good :-)
- johnnycab 7y ago>Incidentally I got a proposal to vote on the other day proposing changing Park Lane southbound into park land with cafes which I think would be nice. It is unlikely to be happen due to the 'solutions' proposed in section 3.3.10 through to 3.3.13 (pg33). Which states that there is no will to implement any measures on this part of the thoroughfare by the incumbent landowners ─ any attempts to do so, have been thwarted for more than a century. The well heeled clientèle, do not particularly need a bohemian cafe culture at the doorstep nor do they care about pedestrians, especially when they arrive at the affluent hotels/hedge fund offices/ ballrooms/casinos, in their luxury automobiles to work & play. The addition of having access to exclusive shopping districts, restaurants, entertainment within spitting distance in any direction, further erodes any case for pedestrianisation. However, there is a good case for lowering speed limit, modernising the subway access and creating more ways to cross between the central reservation, across to Hyde Park.
- dwoozle 7y agoYou don’t need to give incumbent landowners a veto over development. That’s a choice, and one that can be made differently.
- vuln 7y agoI must be misunderstanding your comment. Are you advocating for the government to take a land owner’s property without any recourse? The land owner is given no choice in the matter? Seems awful.
- marcinzm 7y agoRoads are generally not controlled or owned by the adjacent landowners but rather the government. Although do let me know if it's different in London.
- ItsDeathball 7y agoEven if the subject weren't publicly owned land, the implication would be the opposite, that landowners should control their own land and not everything around it that doesn't belong to them.
- gumby 7y agoYes, you misunderstood the comment to which you were replying. Public roadways serve more than just the properties adjacent to them. People should not be downvoting your comment.
- dwoozle 7y agoSure, it’s called eminent domain, the land owner has no recourse but they do get compensated, and it’s an almost universal concept.
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- tim333 7y agoI imagine the land is owned by the government or the crown. p33 says "Some of these solutions have been considered in the past, but have foundered, principally due to lack of resource" but that could change. The road was expanded in the 60s: >a major reconstruction programme in the early 1960s that transformed the road into a three-lane dual carriageway by removing a 20-acre (8.1 ha) section of Hyde Park but I'm guessing the trends are a bit the other way now - less towards cars, more towards pedestrians.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chillydawg 7y agoLife saving regulation. As a denizen of that zone - my office is on the Euston Road which is awful for pollution - I appreciate this a lot.
- easytiger 7y agoEuston road isn't even subject to the congestion charge. Only side roads are. Furthermore the vast majority of traffic circulating in C. London traffic all day are busses, Taxies, phvs and commercial vehicles. Not private vehicles. There is nothing in that note which indicates how, when they came to these conclusions. It's pretty much impossible for the headline claim to be true as a result of the ulez. Where is the supporting collateral? This is political grandstanding.
- cjrp 7y ago> Furthermore the vast majority of traffic circulating in C. London traffic all day are busses, Taxies, phvs and commercial vehicles. Not private vehicles. Isn't that proof that the Congestion/ULEZ charges are working effectively?
- easytiger 7y agoIt has been that way for a decade. They are saying over a recent six month period that that this ulez has reduced something by 33%. That's pretty much impossible as private vehicles largely affected by this ulez program are a fraction of the circulating traffic (which are vastly more pollution/no2 producing vehicles.
- lorenzhs 7y agoULEZ does not only affect private vehicles, the list of who qualifies for a discount or exemption is pretty short (residents are exempt for now, taxis, historic vehicles, and things like agricultural and military vehicles or excavators, mobile cranes): https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/discounts-and-exemptions https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/dis... According to the report, only 9% of all vehicles were exempt (38% of non-compliant vehicles, which were 23.2% of all vehicles in September). Everyone else either pays the charge (£100 per day for lorries, buses, and coaches), incurs a penalty, or upgrades their vehicles.
- Numberwang 7y agoNot enough. We are dying here.
- safgasCVS 7y agoGreat piece of legislation. London’s air is famously bad and this is great start but there is still a long way to go as the air is still awful
- Masterkraft 7y agoWhat about Black cabs? Most polluting cars have pref treatment
- new_realist 7y agoAren’t they going PHEV?
- robk 7y agoNot soon enough
- darrenf 7y agoThe mayor also provides funding towards making black cabs greener: https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/24m-funding-boost-for-black-cabs https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/24m-funding...
- tim333 7y ago>...London’s Taxi Private Hire regulations, which from 1 January 2018, banned new diesel-powered taxis and requires zero-emissions capability. I dare say the old ones will trundle around a while yet. Nothing's prefect.
- andylynch 7y agoThere is already an age limit in place for existing diesel cabs, it is being reduced from 15 to 12 years for earlier models - additionally, TFL will pay up to £10k to delicense caps not built to the latest standards.
- pwagland 7y agoDo you have a source for that? Dropping that age limit from 15 to 12 years would obsolete about 20% of the fleet overnight, since the age spread of the cabs is fairly linear.
- swebs 7y ago>Polluting vehicles account for around half of London’s harmful NOx air emissions What's the other half coming from?
- sjg007 7y agoTrains. Business.
- collyw 7y agoTrains are vehicles.
- willyt 7y agoConstruction machinery, Busses, Gas heating boilers? Probably not trains, only a few long distance trains out of Paddington and St Pancras are still diesel powered.
- leoedin 7y agoThere's diesel trains running out of Kings Cross, Euston, Marylebone and Waterloo as well. They're definitely the minority of train services overall, but there's still a lot of them.
- makomk 7y agoYeah, and they're probably going to be doing that for quite a while longer after the Government killed off plans for rail electrification on most of the currently-unelectrified parts of the network.
- epanchin 7y agoI used to walk alongside Euston to go to work. The air quality was noticeably bad, and you could feel the heat from the consistently running Diesel engines. It’s upsetting they don’t power down while parked.
- youngtaff 7y ago
- lordnacho 7y agoSo there's less pollution in the zone, but do we know whether it's simply moved to outside the zone? We want to have less pollution, not just spread out pollution.
- colinhowe 7y ago> Report on first six months of scheme confirms no increase in pollution around the ULEZ boundary
- pro_zac 7y agoFor those not familiar, here's a map of the ULEZ. https://www.ulezchecker.com/ulez-zone-map-london/ https://www.ulezchecker.com/ulez-zone-map-london/
- jeffwass 7y agoThis is a good start but needs to go further. There are plans to extend the ULEZ all the way to the North and South Circular ring roads, which will really make an impact. But won’t happen until Oct 2021. Hopefully the good results here may help them push this date forward.
- jeffwass 7y agoI seriously don’t understand why this post has been modded down, currently at -1. Seems inline with the rest of the anti-pollution sentiment on this thread. Here’s info on ULEZ Phase 2 Expansion, which I really want to see implemented : https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/ultra-low-emission-zone-to-expand https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/ultra-low-e...
- growlist 7y agoWondering if those active filters I've seen in the past might be an idea - isn't it the case that exhaust pollution is only half of emissions, with the rest coming from brakes and tyres? The US was right to be suspicious of diesel.
- skocznymroczny 7y agoWell, at least they have those filters. In Poland, it's common to cut off these filters because most people don't want to spend money to replace them and supposedly the fuel efficiency is better without those.
- gambiting 7y agoIn the UK there is a £5000 fine for any garage which cuts them out - I wish the same fine was applied in Poland, at the moment it's not legal to do but 1) the penalty for doing so is marginal 2) there is no enforcement at all.
- MisterTea 7y agoThe US wasn't suspicious of Diesel. People here associated them with being too dirty, noisey and high vibration. They didn't want to drive something that ran like a truck or bus. Of course this was in the 70's/80's when there were barely any emission controls and engines were all mechanically controlled. Unfortunately that image stuck with them well into the "clean" diesel era. Shame as my friend had a diesel Passat with manual transmission and it was amazing on fuel and fun to drive.
- growlist 7y agoTry following a diesel versus a petrol as a cyclist. There are estimates that the push for diesel is directly responsible for tens of thousands of excess deaths in the UK, for example.
- MisterTea 7y agoAre you referring to a modern clean diesel with DPF/SCR or the old mechanical smoke belching rattlers? My friends Passat was a 2009 model I believe.
- turk73 7y agoThe Thanos snap would be far and away more effective.
- bartwe 7y agoCool, now close London City Airport for some serious noise pollution reduction.
- jeffwass 7y agoHeathrow has higher flight density, no 3rd runway. The real issue is that they put east-west airport runways due east/west of the centroid of population. It’s almost as if they wanted the airports to maximally affect as many Londoners as possible.
- short_sells_poo 7y agoThis is something I don't understand. There must be a sane reason, right? I mean, they can't be so bloody stupid to have put the biggest airport in Europe on the western outskirts of a city and then have made a major landing strip come in from the east. To your point, airplanes coming in basically bathe the entire city east to west in noise.
- rbradford 7y agoI just finished "Clearing the Air" by Tim Smedley (https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/book-prizes/science-book-prize/2019/clearing-the-air/ https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/book-prizes/s...) which was shortlisted for the Royal Society's prize for science books. The first half of the book covers some of the chemistry of air pollution along with a review of the impact that this can have on health (particularly scary is the discovery that PM0.1 can be found in the blood and may be attributed to cardiovascular disease). Later chapters then talk about how air pollution has been addressed in different places and finally there is some guidance on what you can do reduce your exposure. I discovered this book from one of the episodes of Inside Science featuring the shortlisted books: it's still up if you want to listen yourself: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008jf1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008jf1
- willvarfar 7y agoI recall working in central London in the 90s and having black snot all the time. Where is it now on the snottogram-scale?
- batmenace 7y agoDark Grey, usually
- mattlondon 7y agoI think the blacksnot is mainly the tube more than anything. That said it is much better these days than it was perhaps 8-10 years ago in my experience. TfL have started doing some more involved cleaning at night I think - something like magnetic dusting and regular industrial vacuuming to try and control the dust.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoThe Northern line was always bad for that, someone told me it was because they used to run steam trains on it.
- pmyteh 7y agoSteam trains ran on the Metropolitan and District railways, which have a larger loading gauge. The Northern, and the other deep tubes like the Central and Bakerloo, have always been electric. The tunnels are also regularly cleaned; I doubt there's much if any Victorian steam train grot still floating around.
- WatchDog 7y ago> Polluting vehicles account for around half of London’s harmful NOx air emissions, with air pollution costing the capital up to £3.7 billion every year Where does this 3.7 billion figure come from?
- overcast 7y agoMaintenance, cleaning, healthcare estimates I'm guessing?
- jon889 7y agoI wish cars were banned from most back streets in central London, it's really not necessary to have every small road accessible by car. The only exception is unloading/loading at commercial places but that should only be at certain times.
- WhompingWindows 7y agoHow large/dirty of a vehicle should be allowed to load/unload anywhere? My city has very narrow, small, 1700's streets and there are not limitations on 18 wheelers blocking whole lanes of traffic to deliver a couple of hand-carts of perishables. Seems these trucking companies should be sub-dividing their parcels into more logistically manage-able sizes, but there is no cost associated to these negative externalities.
- TylerE 7y agoSo, you're willing to pay for the additional transshipment warehouses, trucks, drivers, etc? It's also not at all clear to me that replacing one semi with 20 van-sized vehicles is an improvement.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> Seems these trucking companies should be sub-dividing their parcels into more logistically manage-able sizes Are you sure that trade-off of many smaller vehicles rather than one big vehicle makes sense, in terms of pollution and congestion? I'm not as sure as you are, but who knows.
- alex_duf 7y agoNo mention of PM10 or PM2.5 and I'm wondering why
- tito 7y agoA startup called Purple Air has a great map of air quality around the world. It's based on their distributed air sensors: https://www.purpleair.com/map https://www.purpleair.com/map
- bananapear 7y agoPopular methods of representing pollution levels sometimes display data in “equivalent number of cigarettes smoked”, but what about actual cigarette smoke? There’s an interesting difference between actual pollution levels and what is perceptible. You can’t as easily detect the odour of nitrogen dioxide or micro particles from brakes. I imagine cigarette smoke accounts for very little pollution measured by typical methods, but walking down a busy street in London you’re likely to pass through dense clouds of it every few meters. I wonder how much difference this concentrated method of delivery makes to the effective toxicity.
- dylan604 7y agoThis sounds like a perfect place for a hacker piece of art to mount to lamp posts that has air quality sensors and displays some sort of LED art signifying the pollution levels. Skull&crossbones, puking emoji, SARs mask emoji, sunshine & roses, etc.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 7y agoI've been spending less and less time out during rush hour in my city, and it's gotten to the point that just standing near a car with it's engine running for a few minutes can really make me feel... "off". Not sick or anything, just a kind of "my body knows that breathing these fumes is not a good thing". It makes me wonder how I didn't even notice it for so many decades. But absolutely, we need to get smog out of the places where people spend the majority of their days, if only for an improved quality of life.
- edf13 7y agoGoing all electric is all good and we’ll but it in effect just pushing the pollution out somewhere else... that issue still has to be solved. Electricity doesn’t grow on trees
- ses1984 7y agoIt's not just elsewhere but less. Electric vehicles are more efficient, and they can be supplied with clean power.
- edf13 7y agoAre you including the construction energy and materials costs in your efficiency statement?
- jblow 7y agoAre you including the construction energy and materials costs of fossil fuels and engines in your non-efficiency statement?
- ses1984 7y agoOk, sure, pick that nit, but even if it's half as efficient as gasoline, where are you going to find gasoline as clean as solar, wind, or hydro.
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoYes. Do the analysis.
- movedx 7y agoWell no, but getting to the point you've missed: I'd rather that pollution be elsewhere versus in a city centre with eight million people in it.
- edf13 7y agoI think your missing the point of pollution - check global warming
- thinkpad20 7y agoAs a Chicago resident worried about the terrible air quality here, this gives me some hope that things can be improved if the political will can be mustered.
- acd 7y agoGlad to hear it has decreased. Nox emissions are mainly from diesel cars which where sold as clean diesel but where dirty. Hopefully hybrid and electric vehicles will decrease air pollution a lot more. Also car free city centers are a real possibility.
- aries1980 7y agoWhy this is only applied to the very central of London? (Even the Tower Bridge is not covered.) Why is it allowed to pollute the streets where people actually live?
- aries1980 7y agoIt is a shame this is not applied to the oldie diesel trains. I often see a 9-carriage train that each has its own engine running idle at a crowded station. Having 15 platforms as at London Bridge Station, provides a decent concentrated dose straight to the lungs. https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/reports/KCL_Air_pollution_emissions_from_diesel_trains_in_London.pdf https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/reports/KCL_Air_pollutio...