Car must return to the role of servant rather than master if pollution is to be tackled

Standing at the point where Blakehall Road crosses over the M11 Link Road provides an excellent illustration as to why pollution has grown to the dangerous levels it has today.

I remember the protests against the building of the Link road, back in the early 1990s. The people living in a tree on George Green, the occupation of the houses on one side of Cambridge Park Road and further on down the route into Leytonstone.

The claims of the protesters then was that transport policy amounted only to building ever more roads – predict and provide. These roads would then fill with cars and cause pollution.

The car reigned supreme in those days, public transport ran a very poor second.

Fast forward 25 years to the present day and those predictions of the protesters have come to pass. The Link is a very busy stretch of road, often crammed with lines of traffic, emitting fumes, whilst moving slowly along.

Now, the Cambridge Park Road (above) is beginning to jam up at rush hour in the way that it did 30 years ago when the planners first dreamt up the Link Road.

And it is the humans living above who have to breath the polluted air belching forth from this high level of traffic. There are two primary schools and a number of care homes all sitting right on Cambridge Park road - all breathing in those fumes.

Scientific research suggests that living near roads travelled by more than 10,000 vehicles per day could be responsible for some 15-30% of all new cases of asthma in children, and a similar proportion of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and  coronary heart disease cases in adults 65 years of age and older.

There are some identifiable causes of pollution such as diesel cars, though let’s not forget it was not that long ago that people were being told these vehicles were a good thing. Now, the opposite has been found to be the case. People with these types of polluting vehicle need to be helped to make the change, not simply penalised.

The move to electric cars will improve the quality of the air. It will also cut noise pollution – the bane of many lives on roads like the A406.

The urgency of the situation is such that more draconian measures may need to be taken in the short term, such as restricting the number of cars on the road at any one time.

What is for sure is that action needs to be taken. The car has been a wonderful liberating invention for people across the world. However, the car needs to be the servant, not the master of humankind. This cannot continue, unless we are happy to go on steadily poisoning ourselves to death.

Over recent years, the rights of the car driver to drive pollute wherever and whenever has become sacrosanct – this cannot be sustained, unless we want to go on slowly poisoning ourselves to death.   

·        For details of pollution on your road, see: http://www.howpollutedismyroad.org.uk/hotspots.php

published - Wanstead Directory - January