Forum Topic

Heathrow pollution & Cambridge Report

Am I in order to read the Cambridge Report as (not) saying that in the coming years car design will bring pollution down below EU standards around Heathrow for the first time and that this will be negated by a third runway?

Glyn Gordon Collins ● 3228d8 Comments

I don't suppose they can be bothered to measure noise pollution and do some kind of analysis on prolonged exposure to the noise and the crud thrown out by jet engines.They should have been brave and backed Boris Island imo.

Keith Iddon ● 3223d

I see that Gatwick are including diffusion tube results from the Inverness Social Club as Brentford values in their Heathrow Air Quality monitoring report ! :http://www.gatwickobviously.com/sites/default/files/downloads/heathrow_aq_monitoring_report_-_may_2016.pdf

Tim Henderson ● 3223d

Would Heathrow runway 3 increase traffic pollution in Brentford? Yes of course it will, and many studies confirm it. Private cars, taxi's, lorries, coaches and buses would all increase.It's good you take the tube to Heathrow, but most people use vehicles of one sort or another. Personally out of the last dozen trips through Gatwick or Heathrow I've taken public transport only once, when the metalwork in my leg wasn't healed enough to use the clutch on my car.  Despite crutches I had to stand all the way so for the next trip I pinched my wife's car as that's an automatic.Preventing increased traffic congestion and pollution from Heathrow runway 3 is best achieved by not having Heathrow runway 3.  Similarly preventing noise pollution from a thousand flights a day over our heads is best solved by .... well, you know the answer.

Lorne Gifford ● 3223d

You can't have it both ways.  The pollution around the transport corridors in this part of London isn't primarily caused by Heathrow, but by the reliance on the private car generally (as tacitly acknowledged by your rat-run comment).The only way to tackle that is to make it harder/more expensive for people to drive/use their cars, and also to improve public transport links. I've flown from Heathrow around 10 times in the last 4 years, I've only ever once driven there, twice used a cab, but most of the time I'll go by tube or bus, even with heavy suitcases and a double ski bag.  Why ? - because it costs a small fortune to get a cab or park at Heathrow, whereas the tube or bus isn't that much slower and is at least 5 times cheaper for 2 people.  I do fly sometimes from Gatwick but the distance makes it far less attractive when using public transport, so I nearly always drive there and back.  The traffic chaos around Luton Airport all summer has also been a great advertisement of how the investment being made there to improve public transport links is needed, because the current poor links mean that the vast majority of passengers drive there.It's that mindset of always seeing the car as the preferred mode of transport that needs to change, and even if that mindset can't be changed voluntarily, then it needs to be forced to change.Don't get me wrong, my parents will never get the notion of making do without a car, and they always say to me "oh you must have a car", but I appreciate they live in the middle of nowhere (village served by 1 bus service a week) and also have absolutely no comprehension of things like ZipCar and such like.

Adam Beamish ● 3223d

Developments in the area should provide sufficient parking.  It's a complete cop out to provide no parking at all and say all the new residents will take public transport because it's greener. The new residents then park their cars outside the houses of everyone else and add to the overparking problems.I object to Heathrow Runway 3 because it will be massively damaging to Brentford.  It's going to be a thousand planes a day coming in right over our heads. The two existing runways have approach paths over Richmond or Kew. Runway 3 will be over Brentford.Add to that all the extra traffic on the M4 to get to Heathrow, and of course all the 'rat-run' traffic through Brentford when the M4 is chockablock full and stationary and overall it's nothing but noise and pollution.I think there have been 4 government decisions on runway 3 over the last couple of decades, all of which said 'no way, much better for it to be at Gatwick'.  There's also been about a million studies saying things like 'unacceptable risk, illegal pollution, intolerable affect on the residents of Brentford, way better at Gatwick'. Trouble is, just like Salmon and Sturgeon, Heathrow management refuse to accept that no means NO, and keep posing the same request every few years to the next government.  They know full well that can loose as many times as they like, but they only need to win once for the damned thing to be built.  You can say it's undemocratic to keep asking the same question again and again until you get the answer you want, and of course you'd be completely right.

Lorne Gifford ● 3224d

Depends on the "environmental grounds" - although I acknowledge that an extra runway will produce more noise and more pollution in the area, my personal main objection is to the wanton destruction of a historical community simply to make money for the corporate rich.

Mick Brent ● 3227d

I just hope no-one posts on here about how developments in the area should provide more parking but then also objects to the expansion of Heathrow on environmental grounds - you can't have it both ways.

Adam Beamish ● 3227d

The report says future technology will reduce pollution from individual cars and planes and therefore you can have more of them.  It's very thin ice on which to base a conclusion as I don't expect it mentions future acceptable pollution levels will be lower than today's. With this type of assessment you have to use today's pollution levels and today's legal requirements. Anything else is just wide open to selective interpretation.Not really up to the standard you'd expect from Cambridge Uni.

Lorne Gifford ● 3228d