The Transport Panel
The Transport Panel looks at the needs of all travellers by road, rail and river, including cyclists and pedestrians. It studies traffic plans and road schemes as well as aircraft noise and pollution.
Convenor: Stephen Luxford, Stephen.luxford46@gmail.com
The Air Quality Group which reports to the Transport Panel meets on an ad hoc basis to plan Citizen Science projects and to liaise with organisations such as Breathe London as well as lobbying Wandsworth Council and TfL. Because it meets irregularly it is not included in our list of regular panel meetings, but we would like to welcome new members to this group. If you are interested in joining – or just finding out more – please email judith.chegwidden@gmail.com and your details will be passed to the convenor.
Monitoring Air Quality
Wandsworth Council have a monitoring station on Putney High Street which has been recently refurbished with new equipment measuring both NO2 and Particulates (PM2.5). The Air Quality Group regularly review the reading from this station.
In addition in May 2022 Wandsworth Council installed a state-of-the-art Breathe London air quality monitor at the junction of Carlton Drive and Putney Hill. This also measures NO2 and PM2.5 particulates. The results can be viewed at Breathe London Monitor.
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The Society has responded to the Department for Transport’s consultation on Heathrow airspace redesign.
The redesign will provide extra flight capacity to accommodate airport expansion, likely meaning tens of thousands more flights particularly affecting West London areas like Putney.
Most significantly, it threatens to end our current respite period. During the day, runway alternation switches which runway handles arrivals/departures, giving communities breaks from noise. This could disappear.
TO READ OUR RESPONSE PLEASE CLICK HERE
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On 31st July the Putney Society published a response to Heathrow third runway proposals suggesting two ways in which aircraft noise nuisance could be ameliorated.Item description.
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Wandsworth Council are installing an additional 65 e-bike parking bays in key locations around the borough with a focus on our busy town centres. This is to ensure everyone can still benefit from the flexibility of dockless e-bikes, whilst ensuring parking is safely managed.
If you see poorly parked e-bikes cluttering pavements and making life difficult for pedestrians then you should report it directly to the licensed operators:
Lime/Uber: Click this link
Human Forest: Click this link
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This is an expanded version of an article published in the September 2024 Bulletin
More good news on local air pollution: Putney Society monitoring reveals that levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution around central Putney have fallen significantly over the last two years ‐ a big relief, after five years of little improvement.
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Posted on Oct 04, 2023
At the September 2023 Putney Society meeting the speaker was Jim Trimmer, Director of Planning and Development at the Port of London Authority (PLA) who spoke about the roles and responsibilities of the PLA for the River Thames.
To listen to the audio recording of the meeting please click this link:
Note: There was no visual material presented at the meeting
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Measuring pollution in Putney. Our continuing citizen science work.
Posted on Sep 29, 2023
Because of concern over the levels of atmospheric pollution in Putney, especially in the High Street (PHS), the Society has over the past 10 years or so carried out a series of citizen science exercises to measure the level of NO2. However, these have been one‐off exercises, measuring pollution for one month at a time. But now, with the generous help and support of the local Environmental Health team, we have been able to mount a series of monthly tests, enabling us to see what levels look like in the longer term. We have just completed the first full year of these, at seven locations on or around PHS: see the table below.
The highest level was found, not surprisingly, at the northern end of PHS, where it was 62.9 and 57.6 μg/m3 outside Simmons bar and the Odeon cinema respectively; in Putney Bridge Road it was almost as high at 50.7. Putney Cross and the Upper Richmond Road were both in the mid‐40s. To put the results in context, we need to bear in mind that, although agreed the statutory maximum level is 40 μg/m3, this is essentially an interim target level when the agreed WHO safe level is 10 μg/m3. Consequently, the levels we have recorded are still disturbingly high (though lower than when they were at their worst in 2016, thanks to TfL’s introduction of hybrid buses).
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Posted on Dec 14, 2022
The meeting with Leonie Cooper (London Assembly Member for Wandsworth & Merton) on 28th November 2022 when she talked about local transport issues was recorded. To listen to the recording please click of the link: