Reducing emissions from transport

I cycle to get around the city because I can’t afford the fuel for my car. The cycle infrastructure is diabolical in London. There are no segregated cycle lanes that are constantly long enough and even the painted gutter we call cycle lanes are way too short. A lot of the time it’s me waiting for the cars rather than the cars waiting for me.

I feel that there is no encouragement for more people to cycle because it’s too dangerous, the cycle lanes are badly maintained and and the city roads still prioritise driving too much.

Bikes are cheap and emission free and we are missing the opportunity to utilise them.

Cars are acting like bullies who own the place. We sacrificed so much space just for cars it’s indecent. Time to remove on street parking to instead widen pavements, put proper (segregated) cycling lanes, bicycle parking, benches, trees etc. Time to value the humans. Time to really make it hurt to own and use a petrol or diesel car.

Stop Khan approving any more building sites. Johnson and Khan have done HUGE DAMAGE to London by widening roads, approving all sorts of high-rise developments under the EXCUSE of "London needs more housing". London's population in 2022 is almost double that of 1990! We must REDUCE population by birth control or otherwise.
Khan continues to approve/ put money into mega-housing projects in oversaturated and unsuitable locations.: STOP it!

London’s air quality is utterly appalling to the point where I cannot go out without a pollution mask on. No one should need to drive in inner (zones 1-4) London unless it is for work or disability purposes. The public transport infrastructure is there (albeit poorly maintained), we just need better cycle and pedestrian lanes. So many other European cities have this sorted and have all but removed traffic problems yet London lags behind. Until London gets it act together children and vulnerable people will continue to suffocate in its poisonous air. Shameful that one of the ‘greatest cities in the world’ is so toxic to its own residents.

It is not the case that car use can feasibly be avoided for some. Those trying to travel around London (e.g. zone 6 to zone 6) often have limited options. A journey on public transport likely takes you miles into and out of central London to get there - very time inefficient compared to driving what may be just a few miles.

Driving inside London is already awful, so only those weirdly committed to their cars do it now - look at car ownership rates vs the rest of the UK. Measures such as extending the ULEZ and congestion charge zone (why not?) should be seen as ways to extract cash from those who choose to drive, and to be clear I think this is a reasonable thing to do. It is important to consider how this affects tradespeople and the portion of disabled people who necessarily depend on their car, but the rest of us can rely on walking, public transport, bikes, and the occasional hired vehicle. As a large proportion of us do already: I relied on my car before I moved to London and when I moved here I sold it.

Many people cycle in London as it is now. Improving the provision of long-distance, high-quality cycle routes is likely to encourage more to cycle. The long-distance aspect makes navigation far easier: you can just follow signposts rather than remembering turn-after-turn or needing a sat-nav. The high-quality (i.e. wide, some physical separation from cars, no sudden turns, not disappearing and reappearing every 200 metres) makes them more appealing to new cyclists and means that experienced and fast cyclists will actually use them. Fitting in such lanes probably requires removing lanes for motor traffic and spaces for car parking on major roads.

Secure cycle parking is an issue. Cities with very high cycling modal shares also struggle with inappropriate cycle parking. The secure lockers on residential streets are great if they are there but do not help when you get to the shops or the office. Addressing this requires a lot of sheffield stands all over, and currently these are few and far between.

The introduction of multiple cycle lanes has increased delays in journeys and increased congestion in almost every area while themselves receiving very little use in comparison with cyclists still using rhetoric roads right next to them. The current statistics used have been massively skewed due to reduction in travel due to covid over the last two years so meaning due data about the impacts of anything introduced in that time period is worthless. All studies show that stationary traffic is far more harmful than higher rates of flowing traffic especially in residential areas as stationary traffic allows for build up and pockets of harmful gasses. Implementing schemes to make driving harder in London is causing more air quality problems and the congestion charge and ulez are just an additional tax on the cost of living. People don't drive In to London just for fun the vast majority are for work purposes so increasing costs will not reduce flow. Roads need to be widened and access made easier, public transport does not have the capacity to cope with current numbers during rush hours let alone if everyone swapped over to other methods. I have no faith in the mayor or London authorities ability to handle this matter as they are far mire interested in headline pieces to score points against political agendas rather then problem solving and city planning. Go to lower Thames Street during rush hour and trace the blockage there back across Tower Bridge into the residential roads where the air quality is horrendous and you will see the effects of current planning and policy.

I have chosen, for most of my life, not to run a car although I passed my driving test and was driving for about a year. As a result, my health is much better for my age (74) than many of my contemporaries. If more people would make the same choice as I have, our environment would improve very rapidly.
We need positive incentives to encourage people to stop depending on private cars.
1. Much better, more convenient and cheaper public transport. Priority to be given to trains rather than buses, so as to reduce congestion on the roads.
2. Places of interest and entertainment, e.g. RHS garden at Wisley, National Trust properties and other sites that attract visitors should undertake to lay on low-cost easily accessible transport so that their visitors are not obliged to bring their cars. These bodies are not short of money, and anyway could increase their membership fees to help the environment. The enormous amount of space currently occupied by car parks, at Wisley for example, would then be free for other uses, perhaps including fundraising activities to help with the costs of the new transport.
3. Developers building new housing need to be encouraged and incentivised to provide train, tram, boat or other access to new estates. The objections that people always raise to new building in their neighbourhoods are largely due to the fact that every new household that comes to the area will probably bring at least 2 more private cars to add to existing congestion.
4. More areas should be made safe for unescorted children to walk, play or cycle in. Parents would allow their children to go out more, if the outside environment was not so dangerous. Then children would form the habit of walking, instead of being driven to school and other activities.

We have to cut down the number of home deliveries. Personally, I would bring in a £2 charge for every home delivery (waived for anyone disabled or over 80) which would be levied on the vendor. Obviously, food deliveries would be exempt. The £2 fee would not be charged if the items were delivered to lockers. Before bringing in the charge, I would make sure that every station in London had lockers, and that they were also in shops and local businesses. The aim would be that every Londoner would be within 500m of a locker. How would this help?
1. It'd cut down the number of failed deliveries.
2. It's madness that people might have four vans come to their house during the course of a day. Those vans should go to lockers and just unload all the items for the area in one stop. As people come home from work through the station, they can collect all their items in one go.
Essentially we are told that with things like Amazon Prime we have free delivery. It's not free. It costs us all poor air quality and congestion. the carrier bag charge changed our culture, it's time to change the culture again.

The first step the mayor could take very soon, as an interim/medium-term measure, would be to include vehicles which emit well above the average level of CO2 in the criteria for the Ultra-Low Emission Zone. This could be enforced using the existing cameras and therefore would need no upfront investment, only a consultation, which would not be costly. 2018 statistics show that nearly one-sixth of UK cars emitted more than 171 grams of CO2 per kilometer, while nearly two-thirds emitted 151 grams or less. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has data showing the tested amount of CO2 emitted by each car model. Therefore drivers of cars to be added to the ULEZ could be informed, so they could change their transport options before the launch date. TfL states that there are 2.6 million cars in London. The expanded Ultra-Low Emission Zone has about two-fifths of London’s population, but a somewhat lower proportion of its cars. The Evening Standard has stated that it contains about one million cars. The number of these which emit more than 171 grams per km would be approximately 161,000. If these cars were driven within the Ultra-Low Emission Zone about twice weekly, i.e. 100 times per year, each would pay £1,250 per year, totalling £201 million.

In order to tackle climate breakdown in a manner commensurate with the damage it would otherwise cause, the mayor should prepare to introduce a comprehensive per mile road user charge. The ULEZ is a blunt instrument which gives drivers no incentive to limit their mileage once they have incurred the set daily charge. Smart road charging throughout London, at the very modest price of £0.08 per mile, would raise £1.14 billion per year, after exempting electric cars and cars driven by or for people with disabilities. A poll three years ago found that nearly three-quarters of Londoners support road charging to reduce pollution.

I live in an outer London borough with no tubes, a single East West Train line that does not connect well to other transport e.g. Ebbsfleet High Speed Rail, East London Line, DLR. Buses are gridlock and there is no chance of cycle lanes as main roads are narrow (single file for buses already in many places) making cycling so dangerous my house mate was very nearly killed last year. The system shuts down just after midnight and there is not a single night bus from central London.

I pay a massive amount on my Council Tax for transport I can't use (as it comes no where near where I live).

Give us functional public transport and until you do leave our cars and our car parking alone or you will trash our economy. It is already difficult to get staff in many locations with a journey to work of around 7 miles taking up to 2 hours each way on multiple gridlocked buses. On street parking in car dependent areas (since none needs to be provided in the masses of flats being built) is one of the main reasons for bus journeys being so slow here.

Smaller, less polluting cars should be insentivised more and larger heavier ones penalised excessively.

To increase public transport use we need carrots not sticks
- Extend Bakerloo line to Lewisham and alter line problems there so all services can stop to connect with DLR/ new underground
- Have services that stop at New Cross & connect to East London Line
- Build a Dartford/ Ebsfleet link line
- Force local authorities to sort out roads used by buses (removing width restrictions & speed bumps in place to slow traffic, replacing with speed cameras instead) and adding "Red Routes" to speed up bus times
- Re-introduce cheap day returns on overground trains (weekend traffic is worse than week day traffic in some places here)
- Introduce later train times so that all night time journeys don't have to be by car or taxi

I am a driver and think there should be much more done to tackle both larger cars and unnecessary journeys. Many drivers, such as me, require a car for work purposes - this is unavoidable. But people who require a car should be encouraged by all means to use it as little as possible, and have the smallest, least environmentally impactful car possible. Cutting journeys to and from shops and parks etc should be the first aim. Reducing parking at supermarkets so it is readily available to those with disabilities but hard to come by for other drivers would help, and the expansion of school streets/LTNs. The prioritisation of parking over housing or safe pavements is damaging. A specific tax or restriction on the most damaging and polluting vehicles (SUVs) would mitigate the damage from driving.

There has been a great drive to get people cycling, which is good news. But walkable cities are equally important. While e-scooters and bikes are a good option in themselves, the lack of enforcement around pavements can become a deterrent to walking. And if people are to be encouraged to walk more for longer distances, there needs to be simple infrastructure to support this: clean, open public toilets; benches; drinking fountains. In many areas, cafes are the only things providing this - and often refuse to offer it to non-customers. Even street cleaning can have a massive impact on how walkable a city feels; the areas which are badly kept are far less pleasant to walk through, which then becomes a disincentive.

It is mad to me that some councils are allowed to ride roughshod over the city-wide aims too. EG the decision to undo Soho's pedestrianisation was a decision that serves only a tiny, tiny minority at the expense of many others. City Hall should have more power over such decisions.

-publicise the urgent need for action & why
-make it less convenient to drive, currently it's the default travel mode for many unthinkingly because it's so easy & comfy
-raise the cost of petrol/parking/CPZ
-better enable alternative modes & make them safer/more attractive (cycle routes protected from buses, cars & other motor vehicles, cycle storage located off the pavement and with facilities to store adapted bikes, cargo bikes etc securely).
-pedestrianise more streets
-feel too much weight is put on merely changing to electric vehicles(not emission free or without problems) rather than reducing car use
-Discourage parents from driving the school run. To discourage this it needs to be safer for children to walk to school (school streets, parking enforcement to stop vehicles blocking dropped kerbs, designated, safe crossings).
-Enhanced parking restrictions to help visibility/safety for pedestrians eg further extend the double yellows at junctions and near crossings, designate parking spots for vans away from corners and dropped kerbs.
-Public campaigns pressing the issue that driving to school increases road danger and pollution for those walking and cycling and also exposes children within the car to concentrated levels of pollution - better educate about the consequences of this
-A push for more localised children's activities and public facilities so people are not traveling far for such things.
-pedal powered taxi's, perhaps serving sections not well served by public transport
-make cycle training more widely available
-legalise e-scooters with a low maximum speed
-cargo/trike bike hire schemes
-Send a coherent message that traffic needs urgent reducing. Doesn't make sense that we hear that traffic is causing harm, threatening safety, health and climate change yet petrol duty is going down.
-Ensure the needs of the most vulnerable are sought and catered for (including the visually impaired & elderly who are unlikely to see discussions such as this)

London has overall an incredibly poor cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. Having lived in several European capitals, London is the most expensive city and ironically the one with the lowest life quality.

The city needs to stop prioritizing car transport and invest in proper cycleways and pavements to encourage people to cycle and walk more. Generally speaking, space in London is unfairly distributed with wide roads for cars moving few people, almost no cycleways and narrow pavements for people walking, full of traffic lights that stay on green for little time.

The city must look at Munich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona to see how proper urbanism can change the lives of millions of residents. We need cars out of the city, wide cycleways with proper signalization and little traffic lights. We need big pavements with sitting areas and access to toilets.

I still cannot believe that high street such as oxford street, regents street, bond street, high street Kensignton, etc aren’t only for pedestrians. No car needs to go through a high street, it creates noise, pollution and unsafe conditions for children.

We need a city where people can walk, where children can play and more people can cycle. The answer is getting rid of cars but investing heavily in creating the greener, friendlier infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists