Green Assembly Member Darren Johnson questions how the Mayor of London can reduce the pollution so drastically at one site, but not elsewhere.
Results from the air pollution monitor station which the Government has previous described the most polluted hotspot in the UK has shown a sharp decline in the number of times it is breaking the European legal limit. The Marylebone Road monitor appears to have dropped from 122 hours of bad air of NO2 in 2012, down to 12 exceedances for 2014. Whilst these figures on the Kings College run network have yet to be ratified by DEFRA, the trend appears to be out of line with much smaller declines in most other local monitoring stations.
The Marylebone Road figures contrast with the 170 hourly exceedences shown at Euston Road, which is a mile down the same road.
Darren Johnson has raised questions over whether the Mayor has been targeting clean air measures at this particular monitoring station given it is the main one used by the Government to report to the European Commission.
Darren Johnson said:
“It is baffling that Marylebone Road appears so much less polluted than Euston Road, when it is basically the same traffic going a further mile up the same road. Is the Mayor doing everything he can to reduce the figures at the Marylebone Road site just so that he can tell the European Commission that London is now far less polluted? That might help avoid large fines but if it’s only the bits around the monitoring sites that are getting cleaner rather than London as a whole then it’s not solving the problem.”
“If the Mayor can get pollution levels down at this monitoring site why isn’t he Mayor pulling out all the stops to reduce air pollution across all of London? We are told by the Mayor and Government that they are doing all they can, but here is an example of them making a big difference in just a couple of years in order to avoid paying European Commission fines. If only the Mayor had that kind of determination to end the estimated 7,000 premature deaths a year in the rest of London.”