Traffic Creates pollution dangers ??!!
You just couldn't make it up!!
The City of Edinburgh Council recognise Traffic created pollution is a major health hazard for people who live in the city.
Yet they have spent years fighting against admitting this and right now are still fighting against admitting it.
Less than a mile and a half from the area on the South side of the Old Town mentioned in the article about which they have suddenly 'discovered ' such alarming facts, the Council themselves are cramming far more traffic through residential areas.
And this is only the first stage of traffic increases that will affect huge areas of the residential neighbourhoods across the city.
The traffic increases will not be temporary as the council continues to maintain and they are goping to happen entirely because of the flaws within the original tram project, now being blindly pushed forward at all costs only so a 'success' can be proclaimed and the whole thing consigned to History.
But as even the Council are being forced to admit--the health effects will not be History as more and more road space is taken away by the tram ...they will only juust be beginning.
This belated racognition of the huge threats from traffic created pollution on human health is obviously a good thing, but enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that the Council continue to avoid any meaningful engagement by residents who have fought for years to have this issue properly debated.
The Council's approach to what to do about the real problems of traffic forced through residential streets is to simply hope it goes away of it's own accord..there is no policiy to tackle it and no will to even admit it because to do so would raise even more questions over the future of their favoured Tram project.
All governments and local authorities across Europe are struggling with the dawning realisation that traffic created pollution is a larger problem than passive smoking in terms of adverse health outcomes.
They are caught between the desire to tackle the problem and the fear that any action could harm the economy of their cities, towns and countries as road traffic remains a vital part of economic activity (and falling economic activity also has terrible adverse health effects on people of course)----- But only Edinburgh is making things worse than they need to be, by pushing through a n incoherent and flawed Tram plan, that while masquerading as a 'Green Project' is anything but.
This determined policy whose effect is to INCREASE pollution between now and 2026 makes a mockery of suddenly pretending to discover there is a problem that needs to be addressed--- They know there is a problem and have done so for over two years, and they are doing nothing to address it, and on the contrrary are doing everything to make it worse.
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