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Little has been done to ensure compliance with air quality laws as part of the transport planning for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, says Lord Berkeley.
On twoseparate occasionsin 2010 I warned ministers in this place of the need to consider compliance with air quality laws as part of the transport planning for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. Regrettably, little has been done.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) launched a consultation on its strategic environmental assessment for the Olympic Transport Plan in February 2011. Extraordinarily, that document assumed 30 per cent reductions would be achieved in levels of background or non-Games traffic, but still admitted: 'The number of daily mean exceedances at some roadside sites is anticipated to be more than the allowable number of exceedances' (page 36). The ODA went on to imply that temporary or local breaches of environmental or public health laws do not matter. That is unacceptable.
The picture gets worse. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) and the ODA have said they consider themselves responsible only for what they control directly (presumably little more than the Olympic fleet) with the 'city authorities' (e.g. the Mayor and Transport for London) responsible for the wider transport arrangements. The latter claim they are no more than delivery partners implementing the ODA's plan. So who then has overall responsibility and authority for ensuring the success of the transport arrangements for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games?
The Secretary of State for Transport tried to answer that question in the other place on May 5. However, instead of easing my concerns, he has highlighted that no-one has overall responsibility or authority. Worse, a number of parties, such as the Mayor, the ODA and the secretary of state, will surely be able to veto proposals they don't like. It is hard to imagine a recipe more likely to produce chaos and failure.
Traditionally, there are two ways to obtain the 30 per cent reduction in background traffic in Olympic cities needed to ensure the smooth operation of the Olympic Route Network. The first is the 'big scare', which manages the expectations of drivers and residents by warning of traffic chaos if they drive into the city, even when that would not be the case. Beijing adopted the alternative approach of imposing a last-minute 'odd and even' number-plate ban for vehicles on alternate days.
Surely we can do better than that. We should ban all the oldest (i.e. pre-Euro 4) diesel vehicles from inner London in 2012, i.e. more than two years after Berlin did the same thing. This would reduce traffic volumes by some 30 per cent and be consistent with the greenest Games ever.
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