ULEZ Zone London Clean Air reality? - The Heathrow effect - where the ULEZ argument falls down and fails....

 

The reality of the 'ULEZ Clean Air Zone is obvious here - 

why are airline's exhaust pollution output not mentioned in the ULEZ 'publicity'?

It is all very well congratulating yourself as Mayor incumbent for cleaning up the air in London streets up by reducing road vehicle emissions, but the real problem is obvious. It is in the sky. And that hasn't really changed since the 1960's package holiday travel boom.

Exhaust emissions might have reduced on the streets, but nothing is being done about the skies and the airlines that on takeoff, blow their dirty exhaust emissions and unspent fuel particulates right back over the London environs, just cleaned up at street level and are now supposedly 'clean air zones'. Something approaching hypocrisy I say.

How does that scenario figure in the 'air quality' measurements and statistics thrown at us? Anyone?

Did you know that an airline taking off expends the same emissions as a family car's average produced by driving over 10 years? - yes that's 75,000 miles worth of emissions in total, pushed out by one airliner taking off - just in getting that one aircraft off the Heathrow airport tarmac and into the sky.

And that output goes for just about every one of the planes taking off at 90 second intervals from Heathrow airport.

You may call my argument simplistic, but in pollution terms that's a lot of shit being pushed back into the 'clean' air and being blown back across a city claiming to have been cleaned up and a clean air zone, is it not?

Some Heathrow airport workers are now finding that they pay the ULEZ fees to be able to drive to Heathrow to work, yet the airlines pay nothing in emissions tax is that correct? Is that fair?

Road vehicle owners pay 80% of the cost of their fuel as duty, they may also have to pay a £12.50 Congestion charge and the ULEZ charge to drive to places like Heathrow. Yet the aircraft flying in and out pay nothing in respect of duty on their fuel?

The Heathrow airport expansion plan was said to be 'good for business' but not apparently the case for the people living under the flight path getting more pollution from more aircraft movements surely?

Talk about mugs being taken for a ride.