By Looking At The Effects Of London’S Transport System, What Are The Future Plans For A Greener City

Introduction

As they swelled and grew, the great cities placed incredible pressure on the environment around them, sucking materials and resources from farther and farther away, as the land was stripped and resources taken.’ (Mc Donough and Braungart, 2002:95). The book Cradle to Cradle examines the life cycle analysis of a product, and shows how we as designers should design for environment (DfE). Applying such analysis on transport is becoming more important than ever. People’s health, Kyoto Protocol and even the Olympics games in London2012 are all an essential reason why London needs a shift in the green direction.

The term green is used loosely in the sense its boundaries are wide apart. Sharing a car to get to work is being green, whilst also walking or cycling to work is also green. Two very different ways to travel, yet one still helps to fill the atmosphere with pollutants, how is that justifiably green? Well at the moment, with the continuing efforts to make the world cleaner for the sake of global warming and reducing green house gases (GHG), the phrase �every little helps’ really means what it says. It would arguably mean that to be green is just to be greener, in which case, if everyone took on an the approach to switch the car for the train or bus, then they would be doing their part to help the environment.

I aim to look at why London is one of the most polluted cities in terms of air quality, and to also look at some of the cleanest ways to travel around London, and to also look at disputing articles that have previously tried to condemn the transport system in the past.

Future transport is an area that is continuously making the shift from the typical monster of the polluters, to an environmental approach to get to A to B. I want to investigate further the introduction of new transport systems, and look at what other cities are using now to tackle similar problems that London are facing today, such as pollution, congestion and climate change.

London’s Transport System

With so many ways to travel around London, this chapter explores the people’s trends and perceptions of commuting in relation to Ken Livingston’s aims of making London a greener city. Unfortunately, changing the habits of people who are happy with the way they travel is easier said than done. People like to have their luxuries, their own space and comforts, for example in the car you have the radio, adjustable air conditioning, comfy seats and complete control of the vehicle, allowing you to stop and go where you like. Trying to persuade car users to use the train, which has none of these benefits and which is very expensive in peak times is almost impossible. Which is why the government are applying taxes on everything environmentally harmful to force the shift between car and public transport. Whether public transport will be able to cope with an increase in popularity will be another issue I will go into detail later

The greenest way to travel around London is to either walk or cycle, and is also seen to be the longest way to travel. A new organisation called The Access Company have produced a website called WalkLondon (The Access Company, 2007) to help people plan their way around London by walking. They do this by entering their destinations online, and comparing tried and tested routes of travel by offering times taken via different modes of transport, including walking, car, bus, and tube, with the objective of making people realise that by walking the journey isn’t always necessarily longer and the experience is calmer. This is a great idea, as it will help people find their way around London by foot, and not the usual underground way.

Currently according to Department for Transport (DfT) (Transport Trends, 2007:44) a typical journey for a London commuter usually consists of using two types of public transport, the biggest being National rail service, and the other the tube. There are 450,000 users a day using the tube service, which is nearly out reaching its capacity in peak times, and leads to problems when there are delays or shutdowns at stations. London’s tube service used to be famous for the best city transport method in the world. Now that other countries have taken on the same approach, it seems London’s tube is more historic, than hi-tech. Cities like Milan and Tokyo are reported to have tubes that run like clockwork, are fully air conditioned and still considerably cheaper. A single journey on the tube will be a minimum of Ð'Ј4.00, compared to the average minimum fare of Ð'Ј1.42 across the rest of the world.

There have been many debates as to whether the London underground is bad for your health. An experiment by the University College London (UCL), that was published twice by the BBC said �Scientists from University College London said �a 20-minute journey on the Northern line through Central London had the same effect as smoking a cigarette.’ (BBC, 2002). This was proven not to be the case. The statement was only true by the amount of particle matter inhaled at the time of traveling on the tube, and not by the impact of particles inhaled. This is not to say that the air in London’s underground is good for you, the dust levels within the tube stations are higher then one would like, but the more harmful particles, mainly iron from brake dust, have little effect on humans health. False facts like this discourage people from using London’s transport system, when actually the tube is one of the cleanest ways to travel in terms of air quality in London.

London is continuously being introduced to new sustainable and green systems and products. The famous red bus is set to go green in the near future with 12 fuels cell red buses circulating London already, and in a 10’s of millions investment, by 2010 the red bus could have a complete switch form diesel to fuel cell providing the price of fuel cells continue to drop. The advantage of a fuel cell bus is that it emits no emissions other than a small plume of steam (H20). Though this technology doesn’t come without the disadvantages too. The extraction of hydrogen from a natural source, usually water, coal or gas still produces carbon dioxide, though about 30% less than the equivalent of a diesel engine. The cleanest way to produce hydrogen is through electrolyzing water through another renewable source such as solar power, which is currently being used to power fuel cell buses