‘Why does not Camden help to try to accelerate the early adoption of these electric cabs’

• CAMDEN Council appears to send all the right signals about the climate change emergency.

In January 2018 it adopted the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) commitment air quality guideline on killer small particulates to reducing their annual mean PM 2.5 level to 10 micrograms per cubic metre by 2030, but in the real world Camden is sadly lacking in actual behaviour.

Well, here’s an actionable and relevant idea for our citizens’ health:

Three of our worst pollution hot spots are along the Euston Road, the terminus railway stations of King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston.

And right now there’s a proposal from HS2 to make things even worse: to cut down more trees on the east side of Euston Square to provide a “temporary” taxi rank next to the existing bus station.

The attractive new LEVC electric black cabs, with zero tailpipe emissions, already represent more than 10 per cent of London’s fleet of black cabs but most of the remaining 18,000 are highly-polluting, dirty, diesels.

Why does not Camden help to try to accelerate the early adoption of these electric cabs by introducing a bye-law, on citizens’ health grounds, that only electric black cabs are legally permitted to queue for pick-ups at our three termini stations?

I believe that new legal guidelines introduced in 2016 devolved just such a prerogative to local authorities where it is to the benefit of the local community.

Every day, as I’ve written before in these pages, St Pancras station is ringed with a toxic necklace of idling black cabs.

The council could precipitate a dramatic improvement at Euston Road’s carcinogenic heart and show some civic leadership.

Of course, the taxi lobby would scream and shout but our health (and that of cab drivers too) is surely an over-arching consideration.

PAUL BRAITHWAITE
Bartholomew Villas, NW5