Media and campaigning activity indicate there is clearly an agenda to try to wipe out carbon based fuelled cars, motorbikes, vans and trucks.
The recent frenzied diesel debate and the London Mayor’s Transport Strategy both paint a grim picture for the future of car-based mobility. By 2041 Sadiq Khan wants 80% of all London journeys to be by public transport, cycling or walking and a zero emission London by 2050. It takes no account of mobility issues that affect the elderly, infirm and disabled.
Passenger cars make up 36% of all London journeys and his vision is to reduce those journeys to a car-free low carbon London within 33 years.
This is a bold idealist vision that’s going to require hundreds of billions to be spent on the capital’s creaking public transport system. There must also be a massive modal shift by millions of consumers to give up their cars.
TfL is suggesting road charging systems based on use and pollution. This may, in point of fact, work if it were fairly and transparently enforced and the current Congestion Charge and ULEZ scrapped.
But, together with FairFuelUK, the FairFuel APPG is anxious that accurate facts are presented to ensure we get the correct legislation to help with clean air and congestion.
TfL’s recent advertising campaigns have been factually inaccurate. Claiming that ’toxic air in London is mainly caused by vehicle pollution.’
Motorcycle Action Group comments on TfL’s latest LBC radio advert:
“To make matters worse, the London authorities commissioned a radio advert, broadcast on LBC on 4th August 2019 and at other times. This advert, in the voice of a child, claims that most of the pollution in London is created by transport. This amazing claim is simply untrue.
For example, the primary generators of NOx are gas appliances, not road vehicles. As for particulate matter, even if all transport in London were to be removed from the streets of the city, between 70% and 89% of the particulate matter would still be present in urban air – the primary sources of this being weather phenomena and agriculture.
The emotive and misleading tone of the anti-transport radio advert underlines a sorry state of affairs whereby the Mayor of London seems happy to preside over a dishonest campaign of discrimination against road users. And all of this is founded on the basis of fake science, justifying the blaming of transport.
Until now, they’ve got away with it because it has been difficult to challenge the falsehoods. Fortunately, interested groups and individuals are forcefully uncovering the catastrophic economic and social impact this persecution of road users is creating.
The Mayor’s tragic mismanagement of the transport agenda is making the capital unfit for business journeys, due to a dogmatic campaign against powered vehicles. The irony is that none of this is helping the environment in any significant way which exceeds the local and economic cost – and none of it is reducing thousands of deaths incorrectly attributed to ambient air pollution.” Motorcycle Action Group