London's attempt to reduce air pollution have been successful

Following on from March 2011, when the London mayor informed inhabitants that he had secured £5 million government funding to deliver a programme of “innovative” short-term measures tackling air pollution, a report has been published evaluating the progress.

Indeed, the report by Transport for London (TfL) looks at the various government-funded measures in London intended  to reduce particulate matter PM10 concentrations.

The conclusion of the report is that the short-term measures have been a “success”.

The report states: “Overall the programme has been a success and delivered tangible impacts on awareness, behaviour and PM10 emissions and concentrations. The CAF programme demonstrates that many of these local measures can play a supporting role to longer term and London wide emissions reduction measures, particularly when seen in the context of their wider benefits, and should continue to be delivered.”

Some of the measures included fitting diesel particulate filters on 120 bus routes, which has been successful.

There has also been a ‘No Engine Idling’ campaign, which asks drivers, particularly taxi drivers, to keep their engines off when stationary.

The findings of the report were presented at the Cleaner Air Conference hosted by the Greater London Authority (GLA) at City Hall on Tuesday (January 22).

TfL’s Clean Air Fund delivery manager said about the event: “This was an opportunity to be fairly innovative and try out measures to see how they work, although clearly evaluating what are quite small-scale measures can be quite difficult.”

In addition, the report claims that further work needs to be done in order for London to become less polluted.

"This is an area of further work which could be developed to understand which types of locations may benefit from dust suppressant application," it adds.