Editor’s Blog on Mayor’s new clean air intitiative
LONDON Mayor Boris Johnson is on something of a mission to help clean up London’s air – especially with the London 2012 just around the corner.
We’ve already had Stage 3 of the Low Emission Zone implemented at the beginning of this year.
While you can’t argue with the aims and ambitions of cleaning the air in Greater London, it has left some small businesses and traders with some degree of difficulty in continuing to trade – see our news story Van charge starts in Greater London.
The change to the Congestion Charge – for cars with emissions below 100g/km CO2 – is well meant but misguided. As it allows lots of diesel cars into London without charge. And those very cars can cause asthma problems with the soot particles inherent with diesel engines.
But the Mayor’s latest initiative is excellent. Boris is asking motorists to turn off their engines when their vehicle is stationary for more than a minute.
Turning off an engine and restarting it after a minute or longer causes less pollution than keeping the engine idling. And it saves all business car and business van drivers money – because you use less fuel that way.
The Mayor’s office reckons that if all drivers in central London switched off their engines, rather than idling unnecessarily, for one minute each day this could reduce PM10 emissions annually (those soot particles I was talking about) by the emissions equivalent to a medium sized diesel car travelling 2.5 million kilometres, or making three return trips to the moon.
For those business car drivers with stop-start – like my Audi A6 – (or business van drivers with vans so equipped) the car does this automatically for you anyway. But I do the same in our family petrol car with the ignition – for all the reasons outlined by Boris.
So if you’re stationary – switch off. And make the air cleaner, whether you’re inside London, or elsewhere in the UK. It’ll make the Mayor happier, too.
Previous blog on the editor’s Audi A6
Where would we be without satnavs?
