• WHO does not want to live in a healthier, safer, environment?

Yet it seems, thanks to an amazingly thoughtless car lobby, we still allow heavy traffic to blight the neighbourhoods where we live.

Surveys show that two-thirds of people want a better, healthier low traffic environment and Islington Council has, thank goodness, pledged to roll out LTN, low traffic neighbourhood, schemes including to heavily populated roads like Offord Road, where I live.

But the progress is painfully slow, and I use the word painfully deliberately.

I, for one, have noticed the effect of traffic on my health in the last year. Last spring, when traffic vanished in the first lockdown, my health was dramatically better.

But as traffic has returned so my health has sadly deteriorated again. I am sure I am not alone.

As the court judgment in the sad case of nine-year-old Londoner Ella Kissi-Debrah powerfully acknowledged traffic pollution is killing us and our children right now.

In all nearly 10,000 Londoners die directly from pollution each year, and many more have their lives compromised through ill health.

Meanwhile two people die in the capital each week on the roads. And the noise of traffic disturbs residents’ sleep and makes people ill through stress.

Heavy traffic passing close to homes where people live brings the triple threat of pollution, physical danger, and noise; and is a complete anachronism.

How much more pleasant, and healthy, our homes would be if the roads passing by were filled with people walking and cycling, children playing in a clean, safe, space, trees and grass; and vehicles were kept at a safe distance, allowed to enter only in times of real need.

Please, let’s not allow traffic to kill us and blight our lives a moment longer.

JOHN FARNDON
Offord Road, N1