Letters to the editor: TfL needs to rethink on pollution

 
Pollution from London's Primrose Hill (Picture: Jeremy Selwyn)
15 June 2015
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It's interesting that in all your reporting of London’s poor air quality I’ve not seen one mention of TfL’s poor traffic management.

What do you think happens when you set all the traffic lights to go red just as you get to them if you stick to the speed limit? You get stop/start traffic and constant accelerating and braking. What do you think happens if you flood the streets (outside rush hour) with empty buses? Pollution plummeted during the recent bus strikes, by the way. And what do you think happens if you take away more and more road space?

All the above lead to increased congestion and pollution so perhaps TfL needs to rethink its traffic policies, which are, clearly, killing Londoners.
Chris Chamberlain

Your headline quoting Mr Varin — “Electric hire will be popular with Londoners who can’t afford a car” [June 10] — is unfortunate as it suggests that only people of modest means might be attracted to such a scheme. We should all opt for less-polluting transport. Indeed those driving gas-guzzling diesel vehicles have a particular duty to consider what they’re doing to our air quality.
E K Woodgate

As a resident of leafy Twickenham, close to the rugby ground, I look forward to the bemused looks on the rugby fans’ faces as they sniff our suburban air.

I am often blown away by the stench from the Mogden sewage works close by — slap bang in an urban enclave. And as the owners are not interested, and haven’t been for years, in stopping the stench (and mosquitoes) from blighting our lives, it is quite possible that for the six-week duration of the Rugby World Cup they will switch off the machines and leave us in the s*** rather than upset the olfactory pleasures of the rugby fans.
Pam Hardyment

The Evening Standard’s Clean Air initiative has been a catalyst for transforming our city as I have never seen before. Any mayoral candidate not appreciating that the mayor’s biggest single opportunity is over transport is in for a nasty surprise.

Three Gordian knots must be cut. First, we need a plan from the Government in response to the Supreme Court’s historic judgment on air quality that shows how London will protect public health by complying fully with air-pollution laws by 2020, not 2030 or beyond as currently.

Second, we need a new deal with taxi drivers that requires the highest customer service and accessibility standards in return for special access to London roads, including bus lanes. The turning circle requirement and proposed 10-year age limit must be scrapped as part of a package of measures that give taxi drivers the financial help needed to get half of them into zero-emission-capable taxis by 2018 and nearly all by 2020.

Third, and most transformational, it’s time to embrace technology with emissions-based road charging that replaces the blunt instruments of congestion charges and ultra-low- emission-zone fines in central London. The current mayor should start work on a simpler, fairer and more effective charging system to be implemented by 2018 that takes account of: time of day; emissions; location; and distance driven by size of vehicle. It would be very simple: rush hour(s) or not; zero emission, new or old diesel and petrol; inner and outer London; and air pollution and greenhouse gases per kilometre.

By 2020, such a scheme should be based on actual emissions rather than manufacturer’s “optimistic” claims.
Simon Birkett, founder and director, Clean Air in London

Overpopulation is the real threat

It’s all very well for Rosamund Urwin to say that Pope Francis can lead the fight against climate change [Comment, June 11], but the major threat to the environment and water supply is overpopulation, and the Catholic Church hasn’t exactly discouraged that, has it?
Laura

We cannot take the Pope seriously on climate change until he stops misusing the Church’s unique seat at the United Nations to block any international aid that includes contraception.

Doing so fuels unsustainable population growth, a prime cause of global warming.

It also exacerbates avoidable diseases including Aids, maternal mortality and poverty through unaffordably large families.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director, National Secular Society

No justification for e-cigarette ban

The NHS Stop Smoking Service offers the best way for people to quit smoking, but for some, e-cigarettes have the potential to help them quit and are almost certainly safer than tobacco.

Tobacco smoke is highly dangerous and even second-hand tobacco smoke causes serious health problems. There is currently no evidence for harm from breathing in secondhand e-cigarette vapour.

Evidence to date on how often young people use e-cigarettes, some funded by Cancer Research UK, shows that regular use is rare and almost exclusively limited to those already smoking. Experimentation with e-cigarettes in “never smokers” is only around three per cent and as youth smoking continues to decline arguments about renormalisation and e-cigs being a gateway to taking up smoking aren’t based on evidence.

In our view — unless we start to see rising youth smoking rates, regular e-cigarette use among “never smokers” or any convincing evidence for harm to bystanders — it would be difficult to justify a blanket ban on e-cigarettes indoors.
George Butterworth, tobacco policy manager, Cancer Research UK

New laws are aimed at us, not terrorists

Let’s be clear about this. When the authorities call for new powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation, it is us, and not the supposed hordes of swarming terrorists that are going to be targeted.

The Government says it wants to keep us safe (as do others), but what it’s really worried about is controlling its own population. And now with the continuing self-defeating austerity measures being forced upon us, along with the destruction and privatising of our public services, including our NHS, they know that we all need to be kept in our place.

Social media has been a thorn in the side of the authorities, because until recently we’ve been outside of their surveillance capabilities. This is exactly why they want to shut this loophole down by introducing more bogus laws.

To paraphrase the late US comedian Bill Hicks, when he spoke of controlling the masses ... “We are free to do as they tell us”.
Clive Collins

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