| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:West Chiswick and Gunnersbury Society | |
| Posted by: | Andrew OSullivan | |
| Date/Time: | 09/12/15 08:53:00 |
| It's clearly wrong to dismiss air quality concerns out of hand. It might suit those who want to accelerate the pace of development of the area to pretend the environmental impact of such buildings is negligible but it definitely isn't. There is a specific issue with tall buildings called canyoning in which pollutants which would normally be dispersed by the wind are trapped in corridors between blocks. It is also totally mistaken to suggest that because many of the new developments won't have parking spaces there will be no impact on vehicular traffic in the local area. Think for a second of the journeys that take place on your behalf - mail and grocery deliveries, visitors, waste collection, trades and services attending your home. Just because a new resident doesn't have a car doesn't mean they won't generate more traffic. There are about 2,000 new homes currently planned within a kilometre of Chiswick Roundabout and conservatively they will create 2 extra vehicular movements a day per unit. 4,000 journeys is probably a small percentage of the total traffic in the area but adding volume at the margin has a disproportionate effect. There are some offsets such as the closure of the scrap facilities around Lionel Road and hopefully some improvement to road layouts but only a blinkered advocate of new development would say that traffic congestion and therefore air pollution isn't going to increase. This isn't a reason not to build new homes but the WCGS are right to insist that this factor be taken into account. |