Construction sites

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-tox…

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.

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.

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.