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9. London’s air quality and greenhouse gas emissions and transport and public health
highlighted the importance of air pollutants on both short and long term health
effects including hospital admissions due respiratory and cardiovascular difficulties
as a result of air pollution, alongside the potential economic costs.
Strategic framework
In 2010, the Mayor published Clearing the air: The Mayor’s Air Quality Strategy, and
in 2011 he published Delivering London’s Energy Future: The Mayor’s Climate
Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy. Together these contain a range of transport
and non-transport measures to reduce emissions to mitigate climate change and
improve London’s air quality. Since then significant progress has been made in
delivering these improvements and building on the wide ranging measures set out in
these strategies. In 2014, TfL published its Transport Emissions Road Map (TERM),
which took stock of progress to date and sought to establish priorities and
recommendations for future policy in this area
(see http://content.tfl.gov.uk/transport-emissions-roadmap.pdf). This section
summarises the key progress so far, based on TERM.
Summary
Steps taken to reduce emissions can generally be categorised into four types. The
section below summarises progress under these headings:
• Promoting a shift towards more sustainable travel choices
• Environmentally efficient use of existing vehicles and technology
• Development and uptake of low emission vehicles and technologies
• Tackling local air pollution focus areas or ‘hot spots’.
Promoting a shift towards more sustainable travel choices
• Permitting greater densities of development in areas that have good public
transport access.
• Continuing to expand and enhance public transport capacity in London, for
example through the Tube upgrade programme, and new infrastructure such as
Crossrail.
• More accessible bus network, to further encourage its use.
• Improving the urban realm and streetscape to make walking more attractive for
short-distance trips.
• Transforming cycling, through the Mayor’s Vision for Cycling.
• Travel demand management, encouraging smarter travel and supporting
initiatives such as car clubs.
Environmentally efficient use of existing vehicles and technology
• Traffic signal optimisation, using SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation
Technique), which now operates at about 5,000 of the 6,000 signal-controlled
junction sin London.
• Lane rental scheme for road works, minimising disruption on the network.
• Freight Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS), a voluntary accreditation scheme
that encourages sustainable freight operations.
• Encouraging out-of-hours delivery, smarter driving and reduced engine idling.
164 Travel in London, Report 8