Air pollution highlights need for safer streets

The recent weather conditions which have deposited dust from the sahara across London have highlighted the chronically bad air quality conditions that we all live with on a day to day basis.

As this report from the BBC highlights, the main cause of air pollution in London is as a result of motor traffic: http://www.live.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26837256

This is yet another reason why we need to create safer streets, where walking or cycling short distances become the norm.

Our Mayor talks about ‘encouraging people to walk/cycle’ something which our local authorities have been doing for decades. I’m not suggesting that they should stop doing that, but let’s fix the streets so that being able to choose to cycle to the shops doesn’t seem like a life or death decision.

There are a number of petitions that I'm running locally which I'd urge you to support, if you haven't done so already:

http://traffikintooting.blogspot.co.uk/p/better-safer-people-friendly-streets.html

Achieving small changes on their own won’t fix everything, but lots of small changes can all add up.