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Very interesting posts williewonka, and worth pondering on.

Air pollution in London and elsewhere is the product of huge numbers of individual decisions about where and how we do things, but it's not the first such problem. London is one of the world's richest cities, and has one of the longest histories of its governance solving its local environmental problems. London has the first sewers, the first underground transit system, and the first solution to epidemic disease. Whatever we do, we are in a good position to make a contribution to the world's air pollution problems.

LiamO
new

33 min 19 sec ago

I might be commenting after the horse has bolted but I can't help but feel that a lot of people posting on this site have bought into all of the scaremongering that we are all going to die from respiratory diseases caused by motor vehicles (predominately diesel ones). I would like to make a few observations about the ULEZ:
The start point of charging is surely arbitrary - there is no magic barrier between one side of the North/South Circular or the M25. Toxic fumes travel in the air and are dissipated.
We used to manufacture many things in this country, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, but somewhere along the line our commercial and political leaders decided that it would be better to have the Chinese do it for us, leaving us with crisp, clean air. The Chinese then built new cities and hundreds of coal powered power stations and embarked on a financial splurge on consumer goods and the world's mineral and water rights. The upshot is that their new cities are under a cloud of smog the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1960's. However, this smog doesn't just stay there - it travels around the globe - so the hand wringing about this side or that of the North/South Circular means very little.
The devices you are using to post your comments were invariably manufactured in China and you are not as carbon-neutral as you would like to think. Why do TfL and the local authorities sell the notion that they can reduce emissions on a street by street basis? Why is it that a lot of the roads being closed to through traffic are in more affluent areas, where residents stand to gain from increases in their property value? Why does Kensington & Chelsea have the 2nd longest life expectancy in the country when they have some of the heaviest urban traffic flows?
The much vaunted 9k deaths per year never seems to fluctuate and is never explained in regional differences - those living near the busiest roads should have the highest mortality rates - and the data doesn't filter out respiratory conditions caused by smoking or industrial pollutents and doesn't clearly explain what "early death" is. These are not people dying in the prime of life but they may not be meeting the predicted life-span. The main factor, I believe, is poverty - it kills more people than emissions. Those below the poverty line have a worse diet and more medical complications than those on average earnings and are therefore more susceptible to "early" death.
We do need to plan for the future and reduce (on a global basis) our human detritus but this will need to be done from a much wider perspective than the one adopted by our local authorities and TfL. We badly need the Department of Transport to instigate a review of road and traffic planning in our major cities so that the response is balanced and not the scalpel approach that makes motorists the cancer and local politicians the scalpel.
The main point to remember is that we all need the tansport network for everything we consume. Waging war on commercial diesel vehicles is akin to chewing on your own arm.

WOW LOOK AT THIS FOLKS !!
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/london-is-not-bound-in-toxi...

I think London's population is going a bit mad. Are we going to turn back the clock to digging train tunnels with a pick-axe and shovel? Or bring the thousands of tons of aggregate and concrete in by horse-drawn carts? The Cross-Rail work has been a marvel of organisation and engineering and will encourage people to travel by train. You naysayers seem to be against everything and think that London is a theme park that thrives on Latte and organic super-food. There's one simple way to solve all our problems - halve the population. Who's first out?

I work in the City and the ONLY cars travelling through the City in the day are either cabbies or construction vans/lorries to build walkie talkies etc
Possibly a levy on these to fund traffic schemes and improved public transport?

Developers seem intent on destroying perfectly good buildings to replace them with vanity designs. Unless a building is actually unsafe and needs to be demolished, introduce a demolition tax! This month saw the razing of some very sound Victorian buildings in the Paddington basin, and this deeply saddens us. Brunel and his peers made great contributions to British architecture and our heritage is being lost all for the sake of greedy developers. It is wasteful and destroys the neighbourhood as well as the vast contribution to the pollution problem. Refurbish, don't demolish.

you will shortly not have to worry about this . As we enter a post Brexit London the exodus of financial sector HQ's to Europe taking their money with them. lenders halting lending in the face of political and economic uncertainty. Rocketing inflation on imported and/ or transported goods,leaving no spare cash for individuals to renovate homes along with the expansion of the Low Emission Zone forcing smaller building companies to ruin. There will be no construction industry left.

Is consideration given to vehicle movement a construction site will generate and the impact of the movements when planning permission is given? More effort should be put into pushing forward the use of night deliveries by commercial vehicles and out of London consolidation centers to make deliveries in to London more efficient and reduce the number of vehicles on the road. The best way to solve a problem is remove it!

There are many ways to reduce the CO2 and Nox emissions and even noise emissions on Construction sites. Construction as a whole are starting to embrace both the innovation and technology that is available to them. I work for the company who produce the Firefly range. The idea is a simple one - it charges off the main diesel set, and takes the load when the load is considered too low - kicking back in when the load drops off. I believe that if the pollution in Town was Green - rather than invisible , it would be seen from as far away as Paris. We need to do something radical - and quick

I commute to central London, where my office is surrounded by construction sites that have been allowed to spill over into roads, often bringing traffic to a standstill. It's now the same all over London - too often with a tiny (or zero) workforce taking far too long to achieve little. The effects of this are manifested in many different ways, with pollution only one consequence.

It's time to force construction sites off the roads altogether - or charge them heavily for the congestion they cause.

Why is there little, or no, co-ordination where construction works are concerned? Surely if one road is under repair then alternate routes should be kept open until that work is completed. And why are some companies allowed to cone off a section of road and then leave it for the weekend just because their shareholders don't want to pay overtime rates? Perhaps it's time the mayor put time limits on repairs and imposed penalty charges.

I live on the South Circular which is part of the Excluded Road Network and a high proportion of the HGV traffic is construction trucks carrying aggregates and other such goods. They are excluded from other London Roads and so funnel onto the few unrestricted roads like the South Circular. The ERN should be removed, we all have lungs even when we live on a road on the ERN.

I live on the Isle of Dogs where construction is taking place. Many trucks generate considerable dust when leaving site with mud on the wheels which are not properly cleaned. I'm fed up with the mud which is spread on the road which when dry creates a lot of dust. I doubt if anyone on the LBTH staff has ever checked that the NRMM complies with emission requirements; or monitors dust generated across this area.

I worked in the City last winter and the pollution from the many construction sites was very evident. Is any attention being paid to the health of people working with construction around them all day every day for years?