Cleaning up London’s toxic air

Whether cars or commercial vehicles are the main cause of poor air quality has to be determined by research. Maybe you are right, maybe not.

But in any case the presence of large numbers of cars clogs the roads and discourages 'active' travel. That keeps the number of unnecessary car journeys high.

Case studies have repeatedly shown that traffic is not displaced in the long term. It soon evaporates. It will be interesting to see if the same thing happens when car free days are introduced.

Your point about key routes is a good one. This is how filtered traffic streets work - roads are for through traffic, streets are for access only except for bikes and pedestrians.

This should be discernable from the air monitoring stations data. Though the one near where I live was out of action for some years (it being one of the major pollution hot-spots), and even now I cannot find its data online.
If past daily data records are available it should be possible to compare Oxford Street data on the traffic-free days with the normal traffic days. There was at least one traffic free day a year there between 2005 and 2012, for Xmas shoppers.

The 2013 traffic-free 'VIP' day was mysteriously cancelled in 2013.
You might be interested to read this about Oxford St pedestrianisation:

http://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/why-did-nwec-really-kil…

And this is what wikipedia says about Oxford St air pollution levels, which are staggeringly high:
In 2014, a report by a King's College, London scientist showed that Oxford Street had the world's highest concentration of nitrogen dioxide pollution, at 135 micrograms per cubic metre of air (μg/m3). However, this figure was an average that included night-time, when traffic was much lower. At peak times during the day, levels up to 463 μg/m3 were recorded – over 11 times the permitted EU maximum of 40 μg/m3.[55][56] Because of the diesel-powered traffic in the street (buses and taxis), annual average NO2 concentrations on Oxford Street are around 180 μg/m3. This is 4.5 times the EU target of 40 μg/m3 (Council Directive 1999/30/EC).[57]

I do know what you mean about the behaviour of some cyclists, although you'd be much more likely to survive a collision with one of them than with a car! And in most cases the cyclist would come off worse - further to fall.

I think perhaps segregation would still be ideal, though :-)

The purpose of these zones would be to improve air quality. Bikes don't pollute the air, so there is no justification there for excluding them. There might perhaps be a case on safety grounds. But statistics show that your comparison is quite wrong. You are about 100 times more likely to be killed on the pavement by a driver than by someone on a bike. And investigations show that most accidents involving bikes and pedestrians are the fault of the pedestrian. Many bike riders are seriously hurt by their carelessness. Pedestrians are immune to regulation, after all. So we might say there is more reason to exclude them than bikes, though I think separate bike tracks would be a better solution.

You may not have noticed, but as a group, drivers are far and away the most lawless road users. That's why they injure and kill so many people, as well as poisoning them.

It just shifts the congestion and pollution onto adjacent residential streets. A comprehensive re-working of transport and traffic is needed, over a wider area.
And some pressure should be taken off the centre of London through careful, well-designed, development of high streets throughout Greater London.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a petrolhead and I'm definitely not against free movement - quite the opposite. And I don't mean to be dismissive of all opposing views. But I do get frustrated at the lazy assumption that the only way to achieve free movement is the private car!

I think we can continue to enhance London and its reputation while - and indeed BY - changing the way we move around. At the moment every street is lined with parked cars.. the air is foul.. there are huge traffic jams every single day. And at the same time the populace are getting sick through inactivity and pollution.

Amsterdam isn't perfect and it is smaller, but many of the principles are still applicable. Let's make a change for the better: turn the streets over to people, use clean, green and as far as possible ACTIVE travel solutions like electric trams, moving walkways, walking and cycling. We need to move into the 21st century, not back to the 1970s.

I can explain part of that.. the reason the cycle tracks are being built on the major routes instead of quieter roads is because those are the ones TfL controls. The side roads belong to a mishmash of different local boroughs which all have different rules and priorities.

But we are to have all-night underground trains at weekends (no doubt to be extended to all week in the future). One main reason for this innovation is to increase the London night-time economy - as in an overall increase in economic activity, not just spreading it out over longer hours. Businesses are planning to stay open 24 hours at weekends. As they will not be making the congestion charge cover 24 hours, we will no doubt have deliveries all night long. So residents will suffer from sleepless nights caused by tube trains noise, revellers and shoppers noise, deliveries noise, taxis noise and yet more cars during the night. Not to mention the extra air pollution.

Businesses have been known to relocate to greener and cleaner cities elsewhere rather than stay in polluted London. And so many times I have overheard tourists complaining about the noise and stinking air pollution in the West End. Green, clean and quieter is the way to attract and keep businesses and increase tourism in London. Green and healthy credentials is the broadest and primary duty.

Displaced?? Removed. It absolutely should be 'at the expense' of anyone who was thinking of driving to the shops on Oxford Street. They need to leave the car at home and get the tube, train, cycle.

Cars are NOT inevitable. They're a terribly inefficient way of moving people around a crowded city, especially in the centre.

I was thinking about traffic on a larger scale, not just someone driving to the shops. There is legitimate traffic that needs to come to the West End. Buses, taxies, delivery vans, emergency vehicles, Public service vehicles. These all have to go somewhere.