Smog!

Reading all the above posts set me thinking, as it has everyone else it would seem. First of all, I thought modern diesel engines were far cleaner than they were perhaps 10 years ago but have petrol engines been 'improved' in the same way?  Secondly, are we as a population more sensitive to these modern pollutants than we were to the smogs and similar of 60 or 70 years ago? These days everyone seems to have an allergy to something which was never the case back then. Our new clean and sterile world has probably got a lot to answer for.

I'm glad that this post sparked quite a bit of discussion because public transport is a bit of a passion for me.

But to be really successful public transport needs to be properly priced, frequent, clean, comfortable and in itself as pollution free as possible. I recall the times, not that long ago when buses were dirty, noisy, poorly lit, cold and had windows constantly obscured by condensation.

Today at least in our City of Bristol things are better in that respect, and the buses are more accessible to the disabled as well.  Now we need to finish cleaning up their engines, although there has already been great improvements there too in recent years. 

Inner City parking needs to be priced in such a way as to encourage the use of public transport. We are also planning on bringing back into use several disused suburban rail lines and stations trashed after the unfortunate Beeching cuts.

Finally one other little tip that is proving remarkably effective! "Park and Share"  have you noticed around the outskirts of your large towns, that many lay byes are full all day,as friends park up one car, and then both drivers travel together into town to work?  Well we are encouraging that, because if you think about it - it has the potential to significantly reduce the numbers of cars entering the City.  So we are obtaining a number of plots adjacent to arterial roads with a view to encouraging the park & share concept.

There is no one simple solution to pollution! Simply putting up the price of diesel to the ordinary motorist will do little other than to increase the pain & strain on already hard pressed families.  Reducing polution will only be solved by longer term carefully thought through strategies.

TF

I saw a programme last night about this, all about pollution, etc, so to collect the samples, they frew about in a jet liner, to do this job.  Surely, they are producing a lot of pollution to do this "testing"

Watching 'Our Guy in China', (Guy Martin), the other night it was said by Guy that the Chinese authorities are very close to declaring Beijing as being uninhabitable because of their air pollution. 

My nephew worked in China for a couple of years and said that from his hotel window on the 10th floor he could very rarely see more than a couple of hundred yards or so. We think we have it bad!

Took a holiday in China, a few years back, and was amazed at the pollution in their cities. You could actually see it all day long. Most people were walking around with smog masks on.

The only way to cure it was to drive your car only if the day had the same odd/even number as your cars reg.  People then got two cars with one odd and one even plate number, picking the correct one each day!  Visited a small workshop making jewellry and had to leave because of the lack of oxygen, gross fumes and inability to see without blinking furiously.

When they cure that sort of problem then come back to us to fix ours!

Redface, my job took me to Beijing, Shanghai and several other major Chinese cities several times and so I too have experienced their worsening pollution problems. For that reason I do understand where you are coming from, But surely that does not mean that we shouldn't do all that we can to reduce pollution in our own atmosphere?

I agree that we don't need to panic, but there is much that we can do to improve things here. Such as the measures that I suggested in my earlier post.  No one has commented on the relative difference between the 50's awful Smogs and todays less obvious pollution. Is it for example because we are more conscious of its detrimental health effects now than we were in the 50's?  Were the 50's smogs actually more dangerous or less so?

How about that idea of Park & Share?

TF

Within City limits Electric vehicles are a large part of the answer.  ----- To those who say that " Generating Electricity " causes some polution, you have a good point, but it is still much less of a polutant than millions of vehicles burning Diesel and Petrol within cities.

Since London is the most poluted city,  a good  start to clean up the bad polution would be to ban all but electric vehicles from the city.

The country already has the electricity generation capability to service electric vehicles, but if that needs to be increased, an additional Nuclear powerstation could be built on the South coast ( possibly around Hampshire  or Kent ) to support the additional demand in the London area and the other cities in the UK.

Cheers ..............K

Whilst 'Park & Share' appears attractive, the reality is that it is difficult to co-ordinate with other travellers. Locally, we have a P&R for the staff of the hospital, but unless you have a large single employer, any savings by car-share are likely to be quite limited. Plus you might end up with Peter Kay.

At the moment (WHO lists) Port Talbot tops the pollution list, followed by Stanford le Hope, Glasgow and London, in that order.

CY, The park and share idea does not require a great deal of co-ordination, it generally happens naturally, -friends get together to share the commute, one drives one week, and the next the other does. It is certainly happening every day around here, you cannot find room in most laybyes on the outskirts of the city!  All that is needed to encourage it is a friendly land owner, happy to donate space etc. It works for us!  

TF