How failing to manage electric vehicles could inadvertently promote congestion and pollution, not reduce it…
The age of owning a private car has passed its peak. Fewer Londoners own a private car than ever before, with young people even less likely to do so. Instead, citizens are more reliant on public transport, cycling and private hire vehicles to get around the capital.
But despite this shift in behaviour, London’s toxic air pollution remains high with congestion sat above pre-Congestion Charge levels. The rising number of freight and private-hire vehicles, to both move us around and deliver our purchases, are just two of the reasons behind this. Failure to tackle air pollution and congestion will continue to put Londoners’ health at risk and damage the capital’s standing as a leading global city.
Electric vehicles (EVs) – the ‘new kid on the block’ – are the latest innovation to be hailed as a potential saviour. Recently, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, launched an electric vehicle infrastructure taskforce to boost the rollout of EV infrastructure across the capital. This is good news: London needs to keep up with rapid technological changes and EVs offer the chance to improve air quality, since they produce less pollution at source than diesel or petrol cars.
In 2017, an independent Commission on the Future of London’s Roads and Streets1, convened by Centre for London, called for this infrastructure rollout as part of kerb space strategies, focusing on priority users and maximising capacity and efficiency. But it also identified the need to develop financial mechanisms to spread grid infrastructure costs fairly across each additional charging point, ensuring users pay a fair price for their use as demands on the grid increase. The taskforce should turn their attention to this as soon as possible.
Electric vehicles do have huge potential. An electric bus network and freight vehicles would be welcome changes. With the number of private hire vehicles ever increasing, better to be electric than the alternative.
But EVs are no panacea. Fewer vehicles, not just cleaner ones, are the key to tackling air pollution and congestion in our cities.
What the article fails to say is that the switch over to EVs could be a catalyst for bigger changes, particularly in ownership models of vehicles. Trying to get car owners(any form of propulsion) to stop using cars entirely at one leap is a tall order and unlikely to be very successful. However shared ownership and cr clubs provide a sensible stepping stone for people to cease to be car owners while still being able to use a car where this is seen to be essential. Evidence shows that those households which have shared car ownership, drive less and use public transport and active transport more.
As shared cars are commercially owned rather than individually owned, they are smaller and newer on average and enhanced pressure can be applied for them to be EV.
@quinlet
Indeed it is a complex subject, likely with some unintended and quite disruptive consequences.
I have an article upcoming on Mobility as a Service (MaaS), the new buzzword for this phenomenon.
Another way in which the article is not entirely fair is that it implies that EVs do nothing to help with non-tailpipe particulate emissions like tyre and brake dust. While they will produce the same amount of tyre dust, reviews of current EVs suggest that well-implemented regenerative braking is now capable of almost entirely replacing friction braking above a walking pace in unchallenging driving conditions. Taken with the absence of tailpipe emissions, that’s a very welcome improvement that shouldn’t be minimised.