Reduced braking distance

By Darren Johnson - 8th January 2010

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Air pollution disappeared off the priority list of most political parties and campaign groups around the time when the European standards were agreed and the target dates set, in 1998.

The government’s approach since the late 1990s has been to reassure the public that things can only get better and everything is going to be okay. That complacency has carried through to 2010, despite the fact that Londoners have been breathing illegal air for the last five years, with a failure to reduce particulate pollution (PM10) below the European limit values.

The only hope for a rapid improvement in London’s environment seems to be the European Commission taking the UK government to court. A major step towards that happening occurred when the Commission turned down the UK government’s application for a time extension to 2011.

The previous London mayor, Ken Livingstone, should have acted earlier to introduce the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) and near-zero emission black cabs. However, his successor, Boris Johnson, is proposing to delay action against thousands of the most polluting white vans (LEZ stage 3), and he has already scrapped the six-monthly inspections of black cabs which had previously resulted in over 2,000 being temporarily taken off the road for failing to meet minimum standards.

Ken Livingstone did at least reduce traffic in London and make us the only major city in the world to achieve such a significant shift from the car to public transport. Boris Johnson is putting that success at risk with a massive hike in bus fares, fewer buses and the proposed abolition of the western extension of the congestion charge.

Whilst the new mayor has taken several backwards steps in tackling traffic and pollution, he has got some good ideas in his much-delayed air quality strategy. The key proposal to ensure compliance with European standards is simply closing ‘hotspot’ major roads during episodes of high pollution.

The mayor is currently consulting the boroughs on this, but there are some very busy roads in central and inner London which exceed the PM10 limit values and could be closed at a day’s notice.

If the European Commission refuses the time extension for PM10, then road closures in London will probably be needed this summer. The government will also have to consider overturning the mayor’s decision to delay stage 3 of the LEZ and to stick to the existing November 2010 start date.

Even if the government and mayor avoid the estimated £300m in fines for the failure on PM10, they face the even bigger problem of NO2 pollution. Millions of Londoners live in areas which do not comply with European limit values for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) which begin this year. The assumption made by both the mayor and government is that they will be granted a time extension to 2015 to fix the problem.

That assumption is clear folly. The mayor estimates that his draft air quality strategy needs an additional £70m to £90m of government money, but even that won’t achieve compliance by 2015.

The complacency has got to end, and there must be a much more transparent debate about the scale of the problem.

For example, it appears that the health impacts have been understated throughout the last decade. The previous London mayor calculated that there were around 1,000 premature deaths as a result of air pollution. This is currently being revised upwards, with an emerging consensus that it is more like 3,000 premature deaths a year, and as high as 6,000 if we apply the precautionary principle.

We need technology solutions, such as all buses being hybrids from 2012 onwards – a measure which I pushed through as part of the Greens’ budget deal with the previous mayor.

However, the best way to reduce air pollution and to reduce CO2 emissions is simply to reduce traffic, and that will take the kind of political bravery that we saw when the congestion charge was first introduced.