8 ms·

It's funny how air quality has improved both visibly and measurably during the UK's lockdown, and yet the proposals for limiting car traffic and encouraging cyc

It's funny how air quality has improved both visibly and measurably during the UK's lockdown, and yet the proposals for limiting car traffic and encouraging cycling through segregated safer paths within London are always met with howls of derision.

rumanator 6y ago
> and yet the proposals for limiting car traffic (...) are always met with howls of derision. You honestly don't understand why?
- vertex-four 6y ago
  Sure - because some rich people think they're better than the rest of us and polluting the city we're supposed to be sharing so they can be more properly segregated from us is fine.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > because some rich people think they're better than the rest of us Lol let me break it down for you, but it isn't "the rich" who need cars to drive to the city center. It's the low/lower middle class workers who can't afford to live in the city center but still need to get to work to pay their modest apartment in the outskirts of the city. And by the way, those who can afford the luxury of living so close to their job that they can just walk or cycle to work in the city center are not "the poor" either.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      I'm genuinely curious as to where all these middle class workers allegedly coming into London are parking, how much they pay for that, and whether it's faster to drive at average 12mph vs the Tube.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      There's these things called the trains and the tube in London, which are significantly cheaper than driving a car into work in the middle of London every day. The middle class car owner in London is a myth.
      - rumanator 6y ago
        > There's these things called the trains Those things called the trains connect only consolidated urban centers where, due to their convenience and higher quality of living driving up demand, the cost of living is considerably higher. If you cannot afford to live in one of those places, the only options on the table is a) get a car and endure the obstacle course packed with life-degrading inconveniences to actually hold a decent job, or b) waste even more scarce time of your waking life driving to other mass transit services. So your wage is the same whether you drive to work or drive to a bus or train stop. Great. But public transportation adds easily over 20 minutes each trip to your commute. But that's not a problem, innit? I mean, poor people don't need to spend time with their kids and loved ones. What really matters is if a conceited hipster can ride is bike for 10min eah day to get to work and gloat about how much he is woke and is saving the environment, right? And heavens forbid if that hipster is inconvenienced by having to ride his bicycle on a public road, because that's so unfair to him to the point that it must be a conspiracy by The Man to keep him down.
        avianlyric 6y ago
        None of this changes the fact that there’s a limit to the number of cars you can physically pack into London, and that limit isn’t very high. Putting more cars in increases pollution, and makes it harder to walk and cycle, and reduces the number of people who can safely move around the city. Ultimately if keep adding cars you end up with a situation where cars are the only viable method of moving around the city, and of all the options available to us it’s objectively the worse. Boosting walking and cycling in the centre creates extra capacity on public transport, and non-intuitively creates extra space for people driving into the city as locals won’t be occupying space on the roads. Where I’m living in London household car ownership is about 30%, and the roads already struggle. It’s not like we can build more roads (which would just increase traffic), there’s no physical space to put the damn things in. To top it all off the population is still increasing. So either we can encourage people to use alternative forms of transport, and we build the infrastructure to support it like bike lanes, or what? We just sit in traffic for the rest of our lives? What’s you’re solution to a growing population and in a fixed space?
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      London isn’t an American city. It a dense European city with a large and effective public transport system. It also has tiny roads, and almost no parking capacity. Parking capacity is so low that it’s not unusual for people to drive to the outer reaches of the public transport system, park up and then take the tube for another 40mins into the centre.
    - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
      > it isn't "the rich" who need cars to drive to the city center. What sort of data would convince you this statement is true or false? As expected, car ownership rate increases with income [1,2]. But not sure if this is the right thing to look at. The first reference also says that only 50% of the poorest people (income<25K and ~50% of population) own cars even if they have children, but 85%+ of higher incomes own cars, irrespective of whether they have children. [1] http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-are-there-in-london.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-ar... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/expenditure/datasets/percentageofhouseholdswithcarsbyincomegrouptenureandhouseholdcompositionuktablea47 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
    - Nursie 6y ago
      In London that's exactly wrong. Low/lower middle class people in London use public transport. It's much cheaper and faster to do so, usually.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      There is already a congestion charge in London that makes driving prohibitive for people on lower incomes.
ppod 6y ago
I still haven't found convincing data on this. There is this very weird guardian article that makes claims about large effects but contains a series of figures that seem to show very small effects: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-big-drop-air-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/coronavi... Am I interpreting it wrong?
- detaro 6y ago
  how is 20 to 50 % reduction "very small effects"?
  - ppod 6y ago
    As I interpret it, the charts show a comparison of the change between two periods in 2020, compared to the average change over the same two periods in the previous five years. I can't see much difference between the trends this year and the five-year-average (I suppose the average difference is due to seasonality).
    - incognito_limey 6y ago
      I realise this anecdotal, but as a Londoner living in Zone2, I can actually see and feel the difference in air quality. The skyline is far clearer on average, and I definitely notice myself breathing easier, and I do not have asthma or any other respiratory or even allergy issues.
    - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
      I don't think the data has been published properly, as far as I can tell. A article [1] by York University itself is clearer on what they are saying. Look at the second figure here and note > In the graphs below, the blue bars show the average level of pollution from late February through to late March, taken from 2015 and 2019. The red bars show the average level of pollution between the same dates this year. You can easily see that PM2.5 has roughly halved in London. [1] https://ncas.ac.uk/en/18-news/3057-air-pollution-falling-across-uk-cities-latest-data-shows https://ncas.ac.uk/en/18-news/3057-air-pollution-falling-acr...
ashtonkem 6y ago
I live in Los Angeles; it’s been glorious how clean our air is. We’ve been able to see the Hollywood sign miles further away than you typically can, because of the haze.
- oinksoft 6y ago
  https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronavirus-la-air-quality-improved-pandemic-dont-expect-it-to-last https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronav... > “It is possible that this was partially due to reduced emissions, but meteorology likely played a much larger role.” Here in OC over the past couple weeks the haze has returned, while traffic is only slightly up.
sgt101 6y ago
Where are the howls of derision of which you speak?

rumanator 6y ago

> and yet the proposals for limiting car traffic (...) are always met with howls of derision. You honestly don't understand why?

vertex-four 6y ago
Sure - because some rich people think they're better than the rest of us and polluting the city we're supposed to be sharing so they can be more properly segregated from us is fine.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > because some rich people think they're better than the rest of us Lol let me break it down for you, but it isn't "the rich" who need cars to drive to the city center. It's the low/lower middle class workers who can't afford to live in the city center but still need to get to work to pay their modest apartment in the outskirts of the city. And by the way, those who can afford the luxury of living so close to their job that they can just walk or cycle to work in the city center are not "the poor" either.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    I'm genuinely curious as to where all these middle class workers allegedly coming into London are parking, how much they pay for that, and whether it's faster to drive at average 12mph vs the Tube.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    There's these things called the trains and the tube in London, which are significantly cheaper than driving a car into work in the middle of London every day. The middle class car owner in London is a myth.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      > There's these things called the trains Those things called the trains connect only consolidated urban centers where, due to their convenience and higher quality of living driving up demand, the cost of living is considerably higher. If you cannot afford to live in one of those places, the only options on the table is a) get a car and endure the obstacle course packed with life-degrading inconveniences to actually hold a decent job, or b) waste even more scarce time of your waking life driving to other mass transit services. So your wage is the same whether you drive to work or drive to a bus or train stop. Great. But public transportation adds easily over 20 minutes each trip to your commute. But that's not a problem, innit? I mean, poor people don't need to spend time with their kids and loved ones. What really matters is if a conceited hipster can ride is bike for 10min eah day to get to work and gloat about how much he is woke and is saving the environment, right? And heavens forbid if that hipster is inconvenienced by having to ride his bicycle on a public road, because that's so unfair to him to the point that it must be a conspiracy by The Man to keep him down.
      - avianlyric 6y ago
        None of this changes the fact that there’s a limit to the number of cars you can physically pack into London, and that limit isn’t very high. Putting more cars in increases pollution, and makes it harder to walk and cycle, and reduces the number of people who can safely move around the city. Ultimately if keep adding cars you end up with a situation where cars are the only viable method of moving around the city, and of all the options available to us it’s objectively the worse. Boosting walking and cycling in the centre creates extra capacity on public transport, and non-intuitively creates extra space for people driving into the city as locals won’t be occupying space on the roads. Where I’m living in London household car ownership is about 30%, and the roads already struggle. It’s not like we can build more roads (which would just increase traffic), there’s no physical space to put the damn things in. To top it all off the population is still increasing. So either we can encourage people to use alternative forms of transport, and we build the infrastructure to support it like bike lanes, or what? We just sit in traffic for the rest of our lives? What’s you’re solution to a growing population and in a fixed space?
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    London isn’t an American city. It a dense European city with a large and effective public transport system. It also has tiny roads, and almost no parking capacity. Parking capacity is so low that it’s not unusual for people to drive to the outer reaches of the public transport system, park up and then take the tube for another 40mins into the centre.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    > it isn't "the rich" who need cars to drive to the city center. What sort of data would convince you this statement is true or false? As expected, car ownership rate increases with income [1,2]. But not sure if this is the right thing to look at. The first reference also says that only 50% of the poorest people (income<25K and ~50% of population) own cars even if they have children, but 85%+ of higher incomes own cars, irrespective of whether they have children. [1] http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-are-there-in-london.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-ar... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/expenditure/datasets/percentageofhouseholdswithcarsbyincomegrouptenureandhouseholdcompositionuktablea47 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
  - Nursie 6y ago
    In London that's exactly wrong. Low/lower middle class people in London use public transport. It's much cheaper and faster to do so, usually.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    There is already a congestion charge in London that makes driving prohibitive for people on lower incomes.

ppod 6y ago

I still haven't found convincing data on this. There is this very weird guardian article that makes claims about large effects but contains a series of figures that seem to show very small effects: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-big-drop-air-pollution https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/coronavi... Am I interpreting it wrong?

detaro 6y ago
how is 20 to 50 % reduction "very small effects"?
- ppod 6y ago
  As I interpret it, the charts show a comparison of the change between two periods in 2020, compared to the average change over the same two periods in the previous five years. I can't see much difference between the trends this year and the five-year-average (I suppose the average difference is due to seasonality).
  - incognito_limey 6y ago
    I realise this anecdotal, but as a Londoner living in Zone2, I can actually see and feel the difference in air quality. The skyline is far clearer on average, and I definitely notice myself breathing easier, and I do not have asthma or any other respiratory or even allergy issues.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    I don't think the data has been published properly, as far as I can tell. A article [1] by York University itself is clearer on what they are saying. Look at the second figure here and note > In the graphs below, the blue bars show the average level of pollution from late February through to late March, taken from 2015 and 2019. The red bars show the average level of pollution between the same dates this year. You can easily see that PM2.5 has roughly halved in London. [1] https://ncas.ac.uk/en/18-news/3057-air-pollution-falling-across-uk-cities-latest-data-shows https://ncas.ac.uk/en/18-news/3057-air-pollution-falling-acr...

ashtonkem 6y ago

I live in Los Angeles; it’s been glorious how clean our air is. We’ve been able to see the Hollywood sign miles further away than you typically can, because of the haze.

oinksoft 6y ago
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronavirus-la-air-quality-improved-pandemic-dont-expect-it-to-last https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronav... > “It is possible that this was partially due to reduced emissions, but meteorology likely played a much larger role.” Here in OC over the past couple weeks the haze has returned, while traffic is only slightly up.

sgt101 6y ago

Where are the howls of derision of which you speak?