Government must "stop dithering" after High Court air pollution ruling

P3t3 wrote:

This is a actually more important than brexit, but don't expect the government to spend much time on it.

It may be closely tied in to Brexit since the government may feel that when we leave the EU we can forget about some of the more troublesome regulations. The likes of David Davies and Liam Fox will be throwing plenty on their bonfires this weekend.

Of course, some - probably much - EU regulation will be kept. Even for some the government would like to scrap, the National Trust, CPRE et al will mobilise their formidable grey army in opposition to anything that looks like it might see another house built in the countryside. But I'm not sure how many will be up in arms about air quality...

Duncann wrote:

It may be closely tied in to Brexit since the government may feel that when we leave the EU we can forget about some of the more troublesome regulations. The likes of David Davies and Liam Fox will be throwing plenty on their bonfires this weekend.

Yeah, the sad thing is that if they just scrapped the EU regs very few people would bat an eyelid... There isn't really public support for clean air because it's a silent killer rather than being visible dirty black clouds. I don't really know what the answer is tbh..

DaveE128 wrote:

Just pricing diesel cars off the road would go a long way with air pollution, but the govt isn't even willing to do that, let alone invest in cycling and walking.

Lots of voters drive diesel cars - that's the basic issue. You'd probably need to compensate them for making their cars very expensive to run and much less valuable in re-sale. Maybe that's the solution, or we could just force them out of the areas where pollution is at its most serious. You may then find that's it's more about vans, lorries and buses - less politically sensitive maybe but also harder to deal with from a fuel perspective. Not impossible though.

Of course, rules about diesel engine emissions are made by the EU. They haven't been as effective as they should have been thus far but we could have pushed for improvements if we'd stayed in. Now we have no say in engine and emissions regulations. We could resurrect British Leyland of course and build our own vehicles to our own specifications (which no-one else would buy).

unconstituted wrote:

Just look at Edinburgh, Ayr etc. You can't even build cycle lanes. Councillors block it at the local level. The sheer hatred up here over something so innocuous will shock you lot down south. It's mental.

 

Not that different down south, it's only a few cities that are a little softer and for London only the central area. The further from the centre the more hostile is gets, the CS11 (Regents Park) is an interesting one to watch as it sort of bridges the two.

The minihollands have had, and will continue to have their share of angry baby boomers with sharp elbows defending their parking spaces with anti-cycling protests outside town halls.

bikebot wrote:

unconstituted wrote:

Just look at Edinburgh, Ayr etc. You can't even build cycle lanes. Councillors block it at the local level. The sheer hatred up here over something so innocuous will shock you lot down south. It's mental.

 

Not that different down south, it's only a few cities that are a little softer and for London only the central area. The further from the centre the more hostile is gets, the CS11 (Regents Park) is an interesting one to watch as it sort of bridges the two.

The minihollands have had, and will continue to have their share of angry baby boomers with sharp elbows defending their parking spaces with anti-cycling protests outside town halls.

Even central London isn't immune - CS11, Tavistock Place, East-West etc all have had organised and fierce resistance. Add in the mini-Holland experience though and the picture is actually fairly positive:
 

a) We are capable, when organised, of winning.

b) Winning establishes schemes that demonstrate in people's perceptions and evidence what we are proposing.

c) What is an issue is volunteer/campaigner resources and energy. And then skills to harness that energy - with an appropriate approach. Partly all of that does relate to cycling modal share that's already there, but there are boroughs in London with high modal share, but few active campaigners, and boroughs with very low share that have amazing campaigners. Enfield, for instance, has 0.9% modal share, is miles from central London, has deeply hostile car-culture roads, yet the campaigners there are amazing - Clare, their coordinator, just won Campaigner Of The Year at LCC's Campaigner Awards. But Roger, Adrian and others there who've been plugging away for years also deserve huge plaudits too!

In summary, wherever we try and put good stuff in, we'll face resistance. That is part of the landscape. It's how we plan, anticipate, campaign etc. that's vital.