UK Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has committed an additional £5 million (US$8 million) funding to the Mayor of London Boris Johnson to help improve air quality in the capital.
The funding is for a program of localized measures designed to improve London’s air quality and help compliance with legally binding European targets. The Mayor intends to use the money to establish a Clean Air Fund to extend measures in place at the small number of locations in central London that are at risk of exceeding the daily limit value for particulate matter (PM10) including Marylebone Road. These include: trials of dust suppressant technology, redeployment of the cleanest buses on routes through these areas and measures to reduce vehicle idling.
Other measures being developed that could now be extended include travel plans for local businesses, traffic smoothing measures, the development of a no-idling zone, local cycling and walking schemes and the introduction of “greening” (e.g. tree and vegetation planting) to help absorb particles.
The EU’s Ambient Air Quality Directive 2008 requires Member States to ensure that levels of various pollutants in ambient air comply with certain standards. Air quality across much of the UK is excellent, but parts of London do not yet comply with the standard for particulate matter (PM10).
On 11 March 2011, the European Commission awarded a temporary and conditional exemption in the Greater London Urban Area for the air quality standards for PM10. This allowed the UK some additional time to comply with the air quality standard for PM10 on the condition that a number of short-term measures were introduced to control activities which contribute to the risk of the PM10 limit value being exceeded. If these measures are not introduced, the risk of the Commission progressing infraction proceedings against the UK is likely to increase.
This is a new requirement that was not foreseen at the time of the Transport for London (TfL) funding agreement during last year’s Spending Review. London is the only UK location assessed to have areas that do not comply with the PM10 limit value. This money is being made exceptionally available due to savings within the past financial year (2010/11) within the Department for Transport.