Reducing emissions from transport

I have an EV and solar panels. I did not use the scrappage scheme. I also have solar panels but due to the PlanningRegulations in London permission has just been granted to demolish 3 buildings only built in 1990 and rebuild twice as high. This will block sunlight from my panels. Is this right or fair? The traffic pollution in my area has increased due to the LTN scheme that people in the area do not want. This has increased and slowed vehicles on the major roads, therefore increasing pollution. You do not reduce traffic emissions by closing roads. This increases them. Nor do you encourage people onto public transport by removing and changing bus routes such as the RV1 and 45.

Low-income car-drivers without a blue badge are feeling extremely pressurised, stigmatised and hated by our own city administration.
There should be a BIG difference between the role of car use in OUTER London and the inner city.
Driving from Enfield to Borehamwood is totally to legitimate and not comparable to driving from Camden to Angel.
Also the public transport in outer London is VERY bad. There are routes into and out of the city centre (although severely overcrowded), but around and between places in outer London it is terrible.
My life and mental health have been destroyed by Labour’s hostility and demonisation towards me as a car driver. The rich will be able to keep their cars and pay more. Healthy hipsters in zone 2 can cycle. But poor people with limited mobility like me in the outer zones have the worst of both worlds.
The climate change-obsessed elite in zone 2 don’t know what it is like. They live in cycling distance of the city centre and can hop on the tube for short journeys and can afford taxis.
But I feel very demonised and hated by the mayor and his administration.
I believe some more cycling is a good thing.
But trying to abolish car ownership and pressurise us to give up cars is cruel and wrong. Don’t shrink the road capacity and take our parking away and price the poor off the roads. It’s unfair.
I believe in more cycling and more public transport capacity - passionately. I do not believe in bullying vulnerable people out of their cars.

London would benefit from a vehicle ownership lottery like they have in Singapore. Each council can set a finite number of vehicles that can be registered, starting with the current number of cars that are registered/insured to the addresses in their borough. The numbers can be reduced year to year, and a those wishing to buy a new vehicle can enter a lottery for any remaining spots as people give up their combustion engine vehicles.

We sold our cars in 2017 and haven't looked back. We save a lot of money and have seen marked improvements to our physical and mental health.

The survey was awful and very biased and didn't really drill down to get people's proper opinion. London is not uniform and each borough is very varied yet the survey did not differentiate at all. I am fortunate to live in an outer London borough which doesn't even have a London postcode so pollution is patchy across the borough and my breathing is affected by hayfever not pollution. However we need cars out in this borough as the transport systems across the borough are not joined up so you can't travel across the borough by public transport without a lot of time and effort. we don't have a bike hire scheme in this area and there are very few electric charging points in the borough. before the ulez is increased there needs to be considerable local investment to make using public transport easier or by having electric vehicles. I would like my next car to be electric but currently have nowhere to charge it and nowhere locally.

Don’t worry about the disabled people who rely on cars to get them places they don’t matter that seems to be how London thinks
I’m alright jack attitude

Accelerate the transition toward electric, hydrogen and hybridised sustainable public transport. Make this transport mode more affordable and accessible for all. Reduced services is not a smart move.
Encourage more people to go onto two or three wheeled vehicles be they fuel motored, self powered or electric hybrid. Reduce the cost of CBT, motorcycle and proficiency lessons and testing.
Consider forming or funding a taxi citizens' cooperative to take on Uber and other private transport companies.
Create partnerships with climate focused legal firms to help those who bought/were mis-sold diesel cars before the introduction of the ULEZ.
Get behind ecocide campaigns that link environmental pollution to personal harm.

Question 6 and & 7 in the survey only give options which I disagree with and if not entered you cannot continue with the survey.
Stop any more cycle lanes which remove road space and cause traffic congestion. Scrap the Congestion Charge and ULEZ, do not extend the ULEZ, make driving in bus lanes permissible more frequently to smooth other vehicle traffic flow.
The scrappage scheme is a disaster and takes perfectly good vehicles off the road, new ones have to be manufactured, this creates even more pollution which you say is so bad, i disagree with all the road traffic plans of the London mayor Sadiq Khan and TFL which have driven the poorest in society off the roads with punitive road taxes. The 'temporary' CC increase during the pandemic was made permanent and is a disaster for London, I cannot afford to drive into London anymore which will effect business.
Air quality has improved since the 1970's and is exaggerated to impose punitive taxes on to drivers, the time has come to stop punishing drivers and seek finances elsewhere, it is not our fault you are bankrupt.

That survey is awful. I’m not sure I’ve been asked for my opinion.

Take the question about how willing I am to change. Of course I am unwilling to change - isn’t that the point of taking action? If everyone in London was willing to change the government wouldn’t need to take any action - we’d all be acting differently.

I am very unwilling to use cleaner forms of transport - and I said so. How will that be interpreted? Why not ask what changes I would like to see - why the questions about climate change? Climate change is too big - you deal with it. Traffic affects everyone in London every day - we are that traffic and we need help to change.

My sense is that saying I am very unwilling to change - as I did to almost every question that asked is effectively a vote against change - but it’s not.

It’s because I’m unwilling that I’m desperate for change - you have to make public transport better, more buses, more trains, more staff, cleaner and more accessible stations and stops. Make driving a car in London awful and expensive - like really really expensive. Charge me per mile or minute - make it make sense to sell my car and get involved with a car club. Make LAs grant access to all car clubs.

Make taking the bus a genuinely good idea. Make taking the train a pleasant experience. More bus lanes, more areas forbidden to cars.

You’re going to have to make me really unhappy to make this work. Again, that’s the point. Deal with it. Act in my interests - but please please please. Do both, make cars expensive, but make cleaner options better. Put the infrastructure in for cyclists and walkers. Make being clean the legitimately best option.

Hi,

I wanted to find out why there is no bus stop nearer to Milton Avenue E6 the walk off the bus and into the street is quite a distance.

I have just completed your transport survey.
I was very disappointed to see that the questions were heavily loaded towards directing the participant me to answer loaded questions.

I thought that it might be seeking views from all parties car users pedestrians and cyclists as well as those with health problems- Londoners in short.

The question set was biased towards supoorting an extension of ULEZ to the M25 which is bizarre to put it simply.

The really simple fact of the matter is that car manufactures have improved vehicle emissions but you are kicking people who are already heading in the right direction, forcing road users to ditch cars that have plenty of life left in them. This is simply not a carbon friendly approach. It encourages the manufacture of new vehicles and is wasteful. You cannot get away from the fact that cities use resources.

This will further damage the London economy by forcing commerce out of it.

I was born and lived and worked in London all my life.
What I am witnessing is the slow demise of a great city brought down by a mayor who had never had any control over his finances. Regardless of what was inherited from the previous mayor trying to extort money from the motorist is a really destructive approach.

More traffic free zones for shopping and around schools. Reduce transport in London especially cars and vans,
I walk more and only take a taxi if very important.
I don't drive in London - can't afford it

Stopping people from driving or making it more expensive is only going to make life harder for Londoners. Local government should be reducing the NEED to drive in the first place. This should be done by changing our planning system to create true 15minute cities. It means reallocation of city offices to residential use. It means building more commercial and office space in the suburbs so that people don't have to commute. It means pushing services and amenities closer to residents, not far away.
We need to stop councils building unwanted tower blocks of only flats and build the things we need so we don't have to travel.

How to tackle transport emissions: This seems only to be achievable by a combination of fewer vehicles on the streets & having those that are on the streets being electric rather than fossil fuelled. Reducing the overall number of vehicles can be achieved by making other forms of transport more desirable, cheaper, faster & convenient than travelling by car. Paris, Oslo & other capital cities have done this by: reducing the number of on-street parking spaces in the city centre, making pavements & cycle lanes wider to accommodate more foot or cycle traffic and having (in Paris) frequent, relatively cheap & widely available bus, tube and cycle hire options. London could increase the number of pedestrianised streets in the centre (& have deliveries only before 10am for example as in Brussels), reduce the number of parking places & parking permits available, have more car-club options, have more vehicle-free events where sections of the road network are closed, close certain sections of the road network when pollution levels get over a given threshold, stop building new tunnels, stop widening roads.

Changes to personal travel: Have got rid of car & am endeavouring to travel by bike or public transport for all journeys now. It works better than expected although the worst part is definitely the commute. As a driver, TfL roads and council roads act seamlessly to get drivers & their passengers from A to B. As a cyclist though, the roads are hostile. Travelling by bike exposes cyclists to inconsistent and unpredictable levels of safety on the roads as well as spray, mud or slippery leaves that either add to safety issues or mean that work clothes & travel clothes can't be the same thing. The benefits of cycling include: 100% reliable journey time (it's generally faster than public transport & can also be faster than in a car), getting a bit of exercise, reduced cost of travel and more flexibility to stop off somewhere en-route.

Scrappage scheme: No experience of this.

Further expansion to the ULEZ scheme is a step too far - TFL is becoming all powerful and hits on the easiest income source giving the public little warning and scandalously inadequate means to object.
London has been much diminished in every respect by the current tenure in City Hall. What is needed is greater competence when it comes to management and vision for the future and a much greater financial GRASP as constant 'bailing out' doesn't always stop the ship from sinking

TFL is becoming a major bully in our lives and espouses 'goody goody' causes in order to get things the way they want
(ie: dispose of private motorists)
However as private motorists are a major source of income for TFL through endless financial penalties bounced on them they may be 'hoist with their own petard'
Further expansion to the ULEZ

Remove the cycles lanes and allow more traffic to actually move around. Remove the LTN’s as these just force cars off of the side streets onto the main Roads adding to congestion. A free flowing traffic causes less pollution than a held up or stopped traffic. Reduce the amount of bus’s during off peak hours. Charge the heavy goods vehicles for using the roads during rush hours. Look to use the Thames for more delivery routes I.e taking the spoil from the digging for the new sewage system up river rather than road. Also with all the construction there are many heavy trucks try to reduce their use of the roads during rush hour.

Air quality has been improving for over a decade and will continue. Vehicles are not the only source and certainly not the source of most emissions.

Lower paid and elderly people are disproportionately hit by the ULEZ. Expansion was not justified and the further expansion is totally unacceptable.

The key to this is reducing congestion by being more clever with traffic light timings. Before Ken Livinstone came to be Mayor one could drive from Portman Street up to St Johns Wood without stopping if one drove at 30 mph. Another useful way would be to remove all 20 mph roads unless there is a specific need for them. They are dangerous as to keep to such a very low speed one has to keep checking the speedo and hence take one's eyes off the road. They and speed bumps, chicanes etc. should be removed unless absolutely necessary and proven to help.

Expanding the ULEZ is not sufficient. I live within the ULEZ but outside the congestion charging zone and the air pollution from traffic on the main roads is still very bad. London + TfL should do more to fully discourage the use of private vehicles as much as possible, for those who can use other methods of transport. The central congestion charging zone has been an incredibly successful policy in reducing the numbers of people driving within central London and it should be expanded.

To encourage people to take more efficient modes of transport, London must invest in public and active transport. I strongly believe the city should aim to create more bus-only lanes and priority bus signalling, and charge for private road use, especially for single-occupancy vehicles. Buses through the congestion zone, where there are few private vehicles, can be so efficient. On the other hand, buses along roads outside the congestion zone, where there are many private vehicles, can move very slowly. People will take buses when they are frequent and efficient.

Electric cars create carbon when being made, and while being transported around the world. Londoners need to not only think about London but about the planet. If you use a car infrequently it might be better for the environment to continue to use your old non-electric car. I know that 's not fashionable - but nothing is simple.
Some people need cars- carers, NHS workers and people who's work takes them to places In London where public transport is non-existent, and people giving lifts to people with illnesses who cannot use public transport. Demonising car owners is unhelpful.
Here are some thoughts-
1. Fines for all vehicles parked with their engine on or which produce clouds of black smoke.
3. Buses to stop sitting at bus stops with their engine on for five minutes to "even out the flow". The flow is not even so this strategy is not working.
4. Trains in London are too unreliable - if you want to encourage more people use public transport then they cannot be late. There is rarely an excuse for a train being late - just fine them £1000 every time they are more than one minute late and they'll soon sort themselves out.
5. Night buses and night trains /tubes are unpleasant- unruly posh drunks, beggars, people using and selling drugs, people shouting and fighting etc. Conductors or more visible staff would help people feel safe. I will always take a taxi back from town following unpleasant experiences on late buses.
6. Make it better for pedestrians by having pedestrian crossings which respond quickly when you push the button.
7. Make cycling more pleasant, some feel intimated by middle aged men (and it is always men I am afraid) who cycle aggressively, shout at pedestrians cars and other cyclists and go through red lights on pedestrian crossings. And cycle on the pavement. I would like to cycle more but these characters put me off- fining the pavement cyclists and the red light crossers would be a start.