Quentin Willson

[AmericanThunder]

The Greens Declare War Against The Car And Van by Quentin Willson.

Part 1

All over the UK astonished drivers are asking the same question: who decided that banning the internal combustion engine was a good idea? July’s announcement that the government will ban sales of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040 was dropped on industry and consumers as a total surprise while the PM was on holiday and Parliament was in summer recess. Worried voices asked the obvious question. Where did this incredible bombshell come from? Well, the responsibility for the most seismic change in personal mobility since the invention of the car rests with the environmental lawyers of Client Earth who, through the High Court, have forced the government to formulate hard proposals to reduce NO2 and particulate emissions from road transport across the UK. In 2015 the European Environment Agency published that now contentious headline figure of 40,000 premature deaths from nitrogen dioxide pollution that has terrified consumers and legislators alike and created the diesel hysteria we’ve seen throughout the last two years. But if you dig deeper into the EEA’s tables in that report the actual ‘Years of Life Lost’ as a result of NO2 exposure per capita across the population of Europe is actually only an average of 3 1/2 hours. Let me repeat that: an average of just three-and-a-half hours. If 40,000 people were really dying each year as a direct result of urban air pollution, our hospitals would be in melt down. But the media took this mischievous number on face value and the inaccurate ‘Premature Deaths’ headline was repeated many tens of thousands of times and has now become the new battle cry for the Green's war against the car and van.

Despite tiny numbers of people actually voting for green parties across Europe they’ve been waging a quiet class war against the internal combustion engine for years and their influence in Brussels and Westminster is amazingly powerful. Well financed (and with considerable help from the European Commission), they’ve managed to persuade the French and UK governments to sign the ultimate death warrant for the motor car as we know it. Millions of drivers in the UK are saying that they weren’t consulted at all and have watched the values of the diesel cars they were told to buy by a Labour government fall in value by a collective £35 billion. Quite rightly they’re saying that this situation isn’t fair at all. The 34 million driving consumers in the UK are alarmed, confused and have been financially disadvantaged. And they bought diesels only because they were told they were doing the right thing. Now they’re being told that in 23 years all cars and vans must be electric because the greens insist this the only way to clean our urban air. As a long-term electric car driver and passionate advocate, (I’ve owned five EVs over the last seven years) I’d love to say that I agree, but I don’t. And I wonder how many green evangelists and politicians have put as many electric miles under their wheels as I have? Not many, I bet.

And that gives me a special position in this debate. I know both the strengths and limitations of our current lithium battery technology and charging infrastructure and have to admit that unless we have a game-changing technological development in the next 23 years the modal shift to pure electrification just won’t be practical or possible. Where will we find enough rare earth metals to make 30 million batteries and the state funding for 10 million public rapid charging points? How will we generate enough renewable electricity to feed the enormous demand for clean electricity? Building more nuclear power stations isn’t a green option and nor are more coal fired power stations. We’ll need much greater battery density, much shorter charge times and feasible battery ranges from a short charge of at least 350 miles. Teslas may deliver much longer battery ranges but Elon Musk’s prices aren’t cheap. We’d all love to drive the wonderful Tesla Model S, Model 3 or Model X but at minimum prices of between £30k and £50k, it's beyond most of our finances. The £10,000 350-mile range mass-market EV is still a very long way off and our current battery technology is leagues away from that idealistic vision as well.

 

[AmericanThunder]

The Greens Declare War Against The Car And Van by Quentin Willson.

Part 2

I know this because I drive an EV every single day. My Nissan Leaf will just cover 90 miles to one overnight charge and if I want to go further I need to stop at a rapid charger for 35 minutes, pay £7.50 and get my battery up to 80% charge again. If I want to cover 300 miles I have to charge three times and the same again to get home. Mainstream consumers just won’t put up with those constraints. For evangelical EV advocates like me, it may work but the 34 million UK drivers would swamp the network and bring down the National Grid in a heartbeat. To power 34 million electric cars and vans the grid will need to produce 22 extra Giga Watts, yet maximum capacity is 75 GW and peak demand is currently 60 GW. Base load is 35 GW so the extra power needed will bring electricity demand close to peak demand every single day - and probably every single night too. Can we really supply all that extra power? We really do need to think about the ramifications of all this very seriously indeed.

Because the cost to consumers, industry and the government will be enormous and the disruption to manufacturing, liquid fuels, parts supply chain, motor industry and oil production will add up to trillions and wipe away millions of jobs. Electric cars need far fewer moving parts and virtually no lubricants so a manufacturing, maintenance and parts supply industry that employs 800,000 will shrink dramatically. The UK economy is inextricably linked to all these sources of employment, GDP and tax revenue. Take all that economic activity away and you risk towing the UK economy out to sea and sinking it with gunfire. And that’s why banning sales of internal combustion engined cars and vans completely is such a radical step. Why the cliff edge? Why the complete ban? Let consumers and technology decide the direction our future personal mobility strategy rather than allowing a small coven of green warriors to decide for us. The risk is just too great and the effect on our economy too vast. And it will be vast. No more car engine plants, a 60% decline in the parts and repair industry, no more fuel stations and the loss of two million jobs - at that’s just for starters. New jobs will certainly be created by the new electric economy but the state will have to finance an entire electric charging infrastructure for the whole of the UK and significant sources of new clean power generation. Will the private sector finance all this? I don’t think so. The government will have to dig very deep to build this brave new era of electrification. And that could mean tax rises to pay for it all which could cause increased inflation and interest rates.

On the plus side, we will see more battery innovation and R&D so range and density will improve over time. We may see new materials like graphene used to create lighter, cheaper batteries but we’re already seeing the commodities industries buying up rare earth metals like cobalt and lithium and prices have risen 350% in the last few years. I like the idea of stimulating the market to develop and overcome its current technological shortcomings but this feels a lot like inventing perpetual motion and at the moment those technological solutions just aren’t there. We’ve had over 100 years to get the petrol and diesel combustion engine to where it is today and we’re expecting to completely reinvent an alternative power source and national delivery infrastructure in just 23 years. I know innovation isn’t linear but a quarter of a century doesn’t sound like nearly enough time at all.

The overwhelming question we should all be asking is what improvement will this huge change make to our urban air quality? Targeting just passenger cars and light vans (responsible for only 16% of NO2 emissions) won’t remove enough nitrogen dioxides and particulates to make a significant difference. We’ll need to restrict industrial and private combustion (all those wood burning stoves and gas and oil central heating boilers will have to go) and reduce emissions from trucks, trains, buses, ships and ground-based diesel powered machinery to really see a significant reduction in urban pollutants. Nobody mentions the fact that buses generate 8% of emissions, underground and overland trains 12%, plant and machinery 14% and domestic and commercial heating over 30% of urban pollutants. And nobody is really sure exactly how much emissions are produced by farming and shipping both of which rely heavily on diesel - and much of it is the heavy oil variety and not low sulphur diesel. Look at all our inland waterways and the 80 + major ports across England and Wales and there’s a rather large cloud of NO2 and particulate matter that isn’t even being measured accurately.

Backed into a legal corner by Client Earth’s lawyers Michael Gove (not a politician with any significant technological or motoring background) has pressed the nuclear button and in doing so has created a massive electoral risk for the Conservatives. Any political party that threatens the freedom of movement of 70% of the electorate must understand how dangerous that is. Driving consumers in the UK have been repeatedly blamed for the poor government transport policies over the last 40 years and July 2017 may be the moment their patience was pushed to its absolute limit. If you have a view on the government’s latest announcement then write to Number 10 (email.number10.gov.uk) and your local MP. If just a fraction of the 34 million drivers out there sent just one email this government might understand the huge risk of what they’re proposing and the strength of public feeling out there. And if you don’t make your views heard the green parties will have won the day and changed our transport landscape forever. I may love my electric car but I’m reasonable enough to understand that we need much more time to bring this emergent technology to mass adoption. Don't ban our existing way of getting about the country but encourage and stimulate new technologies so the Big Change is organic, gradual and achievable. Do that and by 2040 consumers will be able to make their own choice - but completely ban the motor car altogether and you risk an electoral revolution and political oblivion. Theresa May please take note…

Quentin Willson

 

[AmericanThunder]

More from Quentin.

London's Anti Car Legacy...by Quentin Willson


To lay the blame for the quality of London’s air on passenger car drivers is a ponderous whopper of some magnitude. Every transport usage survey going tells us that car use in London has actually declined yet congestion and pollution has risen.

These facts alone should tell us that something is gravely wrong and to conveniently blame the car isn’t just factually inaccurate it side-steps a much more serious issue - the politicisation of London’s roads.

The capital’s road system didn’t become the snarling constipated and polluted ruin it is today without considerable help from politicians and legislators. What we’re now seeing (and breathing) are the unintended consequences of decades of deliberate anti-car policies Over the last 40 years schemes for new roads have been largely abandoned and any innovations in traffic management have been hopelessly timid and ineffectual.

One-way streets, road narrowing, curb build-outs, speed bumps and parking enforcements have made the problem worse not better. In order to actively discourage car use, driving in London has been designed to be as difficult as possible.

And the results of the daily lines of stop-start traffic and the countless regular and repeated applications of the brake and accelerator is a massive increase in tailpipe emissions. Traffic in standstill jams generate 70% more NO2 and PM10s than vehicles that flow freely.

And yet a mischievous argument has been constructed that this is all the fault of car drivers. But UK motoring consumers have no other choice. The car, in all its forms, is the only successful solution to mass transportation we know. Public transport, cycling and walking simply aren’t the transport answers for the millions of daily journeys needed in London.

Figures from the European Commission show that bus and train use across Europe averages out at 9% and 7% respectively with passenger car use running between 80% and 90% across EU member states. To achieve the much-vaunted modal shift from cars to trains is totally unrealistic. If just 10% of the 34 million UK car drivers travelled by train we’d need 50% more rail capacity - and that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Why then have a generation of London’s politicos ignored these European trends and argued for a mythical public transport system that the majority can’t use and would be impossibly expensive to build? Looking back trough the decades of London’s road transport decisions its clear that the blame for the pollution and congestion we now see and breathe lies not with drivers but with successive groups of London politicians who have steadfastly and willfully refused to improve London’s roads.

Sir Peter Hall, a pioneer of regional transport planning said in the 70s: ‘As long as the dispersal of homes and jobs around London continues so will conventional public transport fight a losing battle against the flexibility of the private car.’ Prophetic words indeed.

Back in the 60s there were plans to build several inner London Ringways - radial road systems to run at motorway speeds - but in 1973 the Labour held GLC cancelled the project on grounds of its considerable cost. The 2.5 mile Westaway flyover into Paddington - still the country’s longest stretch of elevated road - is the only section that was actually built.

Piecemeal improvements were made to the North and South Circular roads through the 70s and 80s but little was done to genuinely improve traffic flow along their many complicated junctions and, unsurprisingly, the North Circular now features in the toxicity lists of London’s most polluted roads.

Back then the GLC didn’t like cars and preferred instead to invest in public transport. Derek Turner (Red Derek) and Ken Livingstone (‘I hate cars’) buried the idea of free-flowing freeways through London and came up instead with their Fair Fares initiative reducing London bus fares by 30% and subsidising the London bus fleet.

The GLC’s influence at this stage was pivotal and began the domination of the London bus that we see today. Instead of a strategic road network we have 8,000 buses - of which 9 out 10 are diesel - producing 16% of the Capital’s NO2 in the centre.

Another historic opportunity for improving traffic flow into London from the West and the M40 motorway was the widening of the A40 near Acton and Gypsy Corner. In the 90s the Highways Agency spent £73 million buying and then demolishing 200 houses and commercial properties for the proposed A40 widening. In 1997 when Labour came to power, John Prescott famously cancelled 100 new road building projects, one of which was the A40 widening plan.

Those vacant and demolished sites have now been sold to developers - at an average 26% loss - and the Westbound A40 has become one of the most congested and polluted roads in London with morning and evening traffic delays that can often run to 90 minutes.

This is the main feeder road in and out of London from the west bringing 20 million journeys a year mainly from business traffic and was dubbed by the Evening Standardas one of ‘London’s Most Scandalous Roads’. Average speed cameras and a 40 mile speed limit have done little to improve traffic flows. Many Londoners consider the cancellation of the A40 widening initiative a squandered opportunity that has been enormously badly handled.

London’s historic Congestion Charge of 2003 initially worked well with a drop in traffic of 20%. The system was difficult to use and based on having to pay in advance, (not retrospectively as is now the case) and the use of clunky street machines both of which acted as a significant and sometimes terrifying deterrent to car use in the early years.

The draconian fine-based model of the system effectively bankrolled the scheme administered then by Capita who levied high administration costs of over 40%. The charge has since risen from £5.00 to £10.00 but income has fallen.

Of the £2.6 billion raised since its introduction the actual figure of cash going back into London’s transport system after costs has been only £1.2 billion or just 5% of the total of TfL’s revenue. The scheme hasn’t been the money maker everybody thought it would be. Congestion has increased because TfL admits this is partly due to ‘road space allocation to improve conditions for pedestrians, cyclists, public transport and the urban realm’ (whatever that might be).

In simpler words, road lanes were reduced and surrendered to buses and bikes, footpaths widened at intersections and road capacity significantly reduced causing some of the worst congestion in London’s history. Volumes of cars coming into London are now lower than they were in 2001 and the latest report ‘Travel in London’ says that passenger car journeys into the capital dropped by 13% between 2001 and 2011 yet traffic speeds in the centre are now slower than before the Congestion Charge was introduced.

This is simply because the continued removal of road space in the last five years to favor cyclists and buses has caused a dramatic increase in congestion to unsustainable levels. Its worth noting too that 90% of the net revenues earned from the charge have not been spent on road improvements. For all its early benefits the charge has made congestion no better than before its introduction in 2003 despite a substantial increase in price. These facts should concern us all.

TfL’s increase in Private Hire Vehicle licenses has had an effect on congestion too. There are now over 87,000 PHVs vehicles in London (this figure doesn’t include the 23,000 black cabs). Intended to support the new ‘disruptive’ Uber transport model and break the black cab monopoly TfL increased the number of PHVs from 49,000 in 2010 to 87,000 in 2017 with a total of 117,000 PHV driver licenses currently issued. 18,000 private hire vehicles enter London every day which many say is tipping the fragile road transport balance in the wrong direction.

Uber drivers are reported to come from all over the UK - often as far away as Bradford and Manchester - and this continuous circle of PHVs looking for work has caused new peaks of congestion particularly in London’s core centre in the evening.

The number of traffic lights have increased too - up 5% across the capital since 2008 with a current total of 6,252.

The University of Surrey’s study Atmospheric Environment found that the amount of nanoparticles from passenger tailpipes is increased by a factor of 29 when stopping and then accelerating away from traffic lights compared to free-flowing traffic emissions. When cities across the rest of Europe are looking to actively decrease the amounts of lights in use it seems perverse that London has increased them.

So next time you read some specious environmental nonsense about London’s traffic dreamed up by a green politician in a lukewarm bath - just look at the figures. Less passenger cars are coming into London yet the road system is at a virtual standstill and pollution is at record levels.

Nobody mentions the NO2 and PM pollution from domestic and industrial combustion, the increase of light van journeys or the emissions from trains, buses, HGVs, shipping or ground-based machinery like diggers and generators.

The passenger car is, and always has been, a convenient and easy scapegoat. And here’s the thing - if we don’t stop politicising London’s roads this great city will decline and businesses, commuters and residents will simply go somewhere else.

This is the unforgivable and enormously expensive consequence of years of playing politics with London’s transport system. It really is time to vote for someone else.

Quentin Willson

 

[TransAmDan]

Something to do with the black smoke emitted from Diesel busses probably don't help pollution. Cars may be contributing, but its certainly not the whole problem. Traffic light are certainly a big contribution, they do what they say in their name, they create traffic.

 

[AmericanThunder]

Quentins views closely mirror mine.