Reducing emissions from transport

Narrow streets need narrower cars – cars have to take queues in opposite sides in narrow streets between parked cars to give way, causing slowness, congestion and more fumes, particularly during rush hour. Although not suitable for all individuals and businesses, but where applicable taxes could be introduced to encourage people to buy narrower (and preferably shorter) cars. This should be in addition to measures that encourage cars with better fuel consumption and less pollution. Even a 2% change in this way should have a noticeable effect in reducing congestion and pollution.

The survey was disapointing because it only offered you to a chance to "state the obvious" and did not allow me to explore the complexities of the situation.
For example, I like cycling and cycle whenever I can, but I also have a vehicle and I use it when I need to. I use my vehicle to travel journeys that are not possible by cycling or to carry loads I can't carry on my push-bike.

The introduction of LTNs have meant that close to home, I now have to drive longer on more congested roads to be able to enter the LTN that I live in. The result is I, personally, now produce more CO2 and vehicle emissions than I used to before LTNs were introduced. This is bad for the planet and bad for air quality - especially around major roads.

It is no coincidence that the only death so far directly attributed to road polution was of a girl living on the South Circular road.

I have cycled a 12 mile daily commute for at least 25 years, and have always found the majority of vehicle drivers considerate of cyclists even when they do stupid stuff. But now, when cycling, I have noticed that drivers are less tollerant of cyclists which I think is provoked by reaction to the LTNs and the additional congestion. The congestion also means that my cycling journeys are on more congested roads with poorer air quality.

Please can we re-think the LTNs? The "carrot" as well as the "stick" needs to be used to reduce vehicle use.

I am not happy with Ulez. This is destroying London, meaning friends, relatives and outsiders cannot enjoy London. Also for those who have paid dearly for parking or garages these rules will devalue Londoners properties. Londoners should not be penalised for having a car. This is necessary to visit other cities etc. Electric cars are not feasible to own yet and there is a lack of infrastructure for these.

Stop closing roads to taxis i e Bishopsgate

Remove stupid cycle lane schemes such as Park Lane and Euston Road.

Address the issue of pollution caused by the London Underground ventilation systems and riverboat traffic on the Thames.

Start listening to professional road users

The scrappage scheme is a non-starter if you want to buy more than the cheapest vehicle. It's just a gesture, not a real benefit. You should not be making it horrendously expensive to drive vehicles that were legal when purchased, and which were actively encouraged by the Government (e.g. diesels).

More bike routes need to be introduced. They should be car collision safe, meaning that they should rather go along on footpaths, than along the car roads. Government should encourage (by subsidising and providing more electric charge points) to change from gas fuelled cars to electric ones.
Lower TFL fares would be also welcome...

We need to do far more things to reduce the amount of emissions from vehicles. I also think we shouldn't just think about making changes for this - it's also about improving noise pollution, making town centres better places to be, improving people's overall health.

I think there are three main things we should be doing: investing more in the bus network and improving bus priority; investing in cycling infrastructure, not just cycle lanes but cycle hire, parking etc.; road user charging.

Not being from London, I simply cannot comprehend people who say there isn't enough public transport. Within 5 minutes walk of my house in zone 4 I have two rail stations connecting me with Lewisham, Brixton, Victoria, London Bridge, Waterloo and Charing Cross. There's a tram station across the road. There's a bus stop with 3 bus routes. They're all fairly frequent. Aside from increasing bus services, everything else is sufficient.

We have to change the mindset, and it'll be slow, but people can't think car as the default. I have neighbours who I only ever see get into their car, I never seeing them walking to the town centre, or waiting at the bus stop. The only time I see them is getting in and out of their car. What's that about? So we have to be radical, and charging people for the distance they drive and investing that in public transport is the only way.

The positive way to reduce emissions and high car usership is to make public transport better, and make active travel more attractive. This has to come alongside disincentivising car ownership and usership, but ensuring people have useful alternatives is key to delivering this.

Bus travel should always, where possible, have priority on key travel routes. This means that segregated bus lanes should always and everywhere be the number one priority when designing transport infrastructure. In a Lambeth context, fast bus lanes down Brixton Hill and along Effra Road have been key to making Brixton Station the station with the largest catchment area in London. When users are able to link up fast short-distance bus travel with great long-distance public transport options, it makes public transport usage really attractive.

However, not all routes are served well by London's hub-and-spoke transport options. Improving speed, frequency and reliability on radial routes is disproportionately important. Building more bus lanes to serve high- and mid-volume radial commuting patterns so that bus travel is much faster than car travel is key for low- and middle-income workers, particularly service workers.

A crucial secondary consideration is cycling and active travel. This is extremely important as it allows people to substitite for car ridership in a flexible way, which is good both for their health and the environment. Reduced congestion and emissions will make this option more attractive on its own, but having safe quietways for less confident cycles, through LTNs and other low-traffic areas, linked up with segregated cycle lanes where appropriate is really important. Seeing cycle usage through Brixton increase has been great after the implementation of the Lambeth LTNs.

Ensuring that dangerous behaviour by cars towards cyclists is properly enforced by the Met is also important, as it will ensure car drivers meet their responsibilities on the road.

The biggest issue on London roads is high car usership by those who could use public transport. Fixing this requires a multi pronged approach: disincentivising unnecessary car usage, making public transport better, and making active travel more attractive. I'll cover the first points in this comment.

The ULEZ has been very valuable in getting some of the worst emitting vehicles off the road. However, this should be expanded further, in particular to the South Circular which has high volumes of inefficient and polluting vehicles. Continuing to tighten eligibility for the charge would also help reduce emissions - the London car and van fleet needs to continue to be incentivised to get more efficient. Continuing to fund the scrappage scheme and paying out irregardless of buying a new car would incentivise reduced car ownership.

Reducing the hours of operation of the Congestion Charge zone was a big error, making it much easier and cheaper to drive into town. Reducing parking spaces and increasing parking charges, while protecting the disabled and needy from those rises, is also helpful in making it less attractive to drive into the centre. During the pandemic, doing this and closing streets in Westminster made the centre of town much more attractive to visit and was great for local businesses. Going back to these great policies would help congestion be reduced across the whole of London.

However, we should go further than this. The benefits of removing parking and adding the congestion charge has partly been offset by increased use of private hire vehicles. This should be combatted by adding a per-mile charge for high-mileage users, in addition to the up front fee. This fee would be passed through immediately to passengers, which would further increase the relative attractiveness of using our great public transport, both funding PT and increasing ridership. You could exempt delivery vehicles or medical professionals from this charge if they need protection.

Doing this now is outrageous! With the cost of fuel and energy and food prices increasing and going through the roof! There is a shortage of new cars available to buy anyway. Why add to the misery? This is not the time to push this through. I think Sadie Khan is the worst London Mayor we have ever had, and considering he is Labour I’m appalled that he wants to do this at the worst possible time. I’m a pensioner who lives alone and I still have to work part time to be able to afford my living expenses. I can’t afford to update my car. I still can’t use my freedom pass before 9am so have to drive to work (I work for the NHS) even though travel restrictions have been lifted.

I recently moved to a house that doesn't allow for bike storage. Three bike hangars are available on my street, but they are all full. I applied to have another bike hangar, but there is no timeline to give an idea of when it will be available. It feels absurd that getting a parking permit takes minutes, while there are no options to safely park my bike. Ideally councils should increase their capacity to provide safe parking spaces for bikes on street. In my case I will have to sell my bike, which will mean I will no longer cycle.
Thanks for considering this and best of luck with your work <3

Congestion and idling commercial traffic is causing more pollution! Many of the low traffic neighbourhoods and cycling initiatives are for mainly white middle class men! The traffic from the LTNS slows buses on the roads its diverted onto. Every street near me that has an LTN is a high house price road. Many of these house have big 4X4 cars outside that they drive down other peoples streets-its the definition of hypocrisy! Why are there no cyle parking bays outside building sites? Answer because working class people that do manual jobs travel in from suburbs and cannot or don't want to cycle! Why are cycling and walking lumped together? Its very different, everyone walks, white middle class men cycle the short distance from their nice roads to their nice offices, when its not raining! Its madness to build a city for them, what about everyone else?
I travel by bus, look at the demographics of bus travellers, real mix of londoners, all sitting in solid traffic so a few 'media' or 'It' professionals can get to work quicker. Anyone who says cycling is not male and pale I challenge them to a charity test I pay a pound for every woman or non white male, they pay £1 for every white man? They will need to bring a lot of money

I am absolutely in favour of reducing the level of pollution and the appalling cost of it in human lives and health. However you may not like all my comments.

1. Of course more Londoners were using cars more in the pandemic.

2. One of the big drivers now of pollution is the restriction of traffic lanes in Central London in favour of wider pedestrian and cycle space, which is relatively little used in relation to the enormous increase in congestion and pollution, and so ill health, created; you need to deal in realities not ideology. Free up London traffic to reduce congestion and pollution, and put back recently created single lane carriageways back to two lanes.

3. You should admit that requiring more modern and electric vehicles does not decrease pollution much overall in the world, because more vehicles are being produced for this (as anyone can see, and it makes them cynical) - we need fewer cars made and for them to last longer - but what it does do is get pollution out of crowded city centres where it does the most health damage, and this is important and probably the best we can do. Be honest and up front with people and you will get more support.

4. Some of the questions/boxes requiring answers above are highly tendentious and really asking for just emotional answers: you have no evidence that there are more storms, or that flooding is not caused by greed in building, lack of proper planning foresight, absence of proper draining and run-offs (e.g. as in Germany last year) - you need a more science based response, not just an emotional response.

I have a foot deformation that I was born with which was later surgically altered to fuse my ankle, this severely limits my walking ability, my local council REFUSE to register me as disabled. I use my car everyday for all my journeys, there are no bus routes or trains to get me to work for my start time (05:30) driving is my only option, you want to penalise the fact i work in London but live in a Greater London borough. The public transport infrastructure is shocking in South East London, that there is a serious lack of it. I work in the public transport sector and am classed as a key worker for doing so, but you want me to give up my means of transport to that job? You also want to penalise me for NEEDING to drive due to my disability? Well done.

The combination of low traffic neighbourhoods, blocked roads, and cycle lanes have massively increased congestion and pollution in the area that I live in.

All the traffic is forced onto only a few roads which means that they are permanently congested but the pollution generated doesn't just stay on those roads, it drifts on the air across the whole area.

Roads that have been blocked off now have significant issues with vehicles like the rubbish trucks, because the trucks can drive up the road, but then need to reverse out of the road, causing increased pollution and a lot of noise.

I live on a "school street" where non-resident cars are not supposed to enter or leave during designated times at the start and end of school. But it is not policed. So yummy mummies who are far too important to walk turn up in their 4x4s half an hour early, park up and sit, with their engines running, scrolling their phones and updating their Insta accounts. Pumping pollution into the street.

Where is the evidence to support the intention of extend the ULEZ? Pollution has certainly not decreased where I live, if anything it is now worse than ever!

The focus entirely on "carbon footprint" ignores the issues of pollution. Shift the focus to something wider - environmental impact.

London's planning permissions don't make sense - particularly in Newham, the most polluted borough in London (and indeed the UK), home of new city hall. With one hand there are hundreds of new residential properties being built, encouraging families to move here, and the other has facilities such as a lorry park approved right next to West silvertown station, extensions of rubble waste recycling contracts in the same areas (producing lots of dust), reducing lanes from 2 to one, increasing the amount of time cars and lorries spend in the area, idling, and the silvertown tunnel to name a few. Practices such as this, which produce massive amounts of particulate matter and NO emissions are at total odds with supposed carbon neutral, improving air quality practices. I support the expansion of the ULEZ, and the scrappage scheme, but it's not fair to do that then encourage an increase in heavy lorry and construction traffic for already polluted, impoverished boroughs. Children in Newham's lungs are 10% smaller than children in less polluted areas. The amount of dust in the area is a disgrace. My son has developed breathing problems.

The main thing I would like to see is motorbike noise levels brought down to the same as a regular car. These motorbikes are way too loud!

I think a two key methods exist that will be needed to help Londons air and transport emissions (and therefore helping Londoners as a whole). These methods are by improving public transport links and affordability, and creating more segregated cycle lanes to help more people get cycling.

I would be in favour of ensuring that some streets (say Bond Street, the strand, Trafalgar Square ect) are bus/cycle only roads. This would ensure bus transport will never get stuck in traffic (decreasing journeys time and increasing usage) help keep the air clean and make these areas safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

I also feel the need for additional cycle lanes. In my local area more painted cycle lanes have been introduced in the past few years. This has led me to take up cycling as a form of transport. However these cycle lanes become pointless when drivers can park their cars in cycle lanes (as is the case in many of Brent’s cycle lanes). Cycle lanes should never be able to be parked in and where possible, segregated or protected cycle lanes should be in place instead.

I am aware that these methods will reduce the ability for cars or private vehicles to get around London, but that is part of the point. London should be a hub of affordable, efficient and extensive public transportation, and should compete with the Netherlands to become one of Europes best cycling locations. This can only be accomplished by clearly stating that London is a human focused city, not a car focused city. I also fully support the development of new tube/train lines (such as the Elisabeth line) and would fully support any and all decisions the Mayor or the city take to expand such services.

Hi
Improving pedestrian facilities must be at the top of the list. Many people can’t cycle locally (mobility, young kids, bike storage at home etc). We would love to walk more but pavements are often so narrow and poorly maintained, crossing roads safely is difficult and breathing in fumes from queueing traffic is horrible and damaging to health. Families are big car users but safer and more pleasant streets to walk along could really help reduce this.

With the exception of people with genuine, serious mobility issues, many of us can walk or cycle more. I know two people who have significant mobility issues but they walk a lot, even if it takes them a long time. I know people with children who get around on foot, by bike or public transport. They make the time to do this.

The better the cycling conditions, the more people will use bikes.