According to Waltham Forest, one of the benefits the Mini Holland scheme will bring is much improved air quality. But perhaps the council should have looked across the Atlantic to New York City to see how that city went about reducing its high levels pollution.

During his term in office as Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg was responsible for attaining the cleanest air quality in more than 50 years and made a statement of how this was done which included the following comments: “To identify the best strategies for reaching that goal, we first needed better data-because if you can’t measure a problem, you can’t manage it. That led us to place 150 air-quality sensors at street level around the city, and what we learned was startling: one per cent of the city’s buildings-were producing more soot pollution than all the vehicles on our roads combined.”

This compares to only three permanent sites being monitored in Waltham Forest prior to Mini Holland starting. So it’s impossible to make comparisons following the blocking off of roads and/or other roads where traffic will have to go and becoming more congested. However, since January 1 2016, 18 sites are being monitored via the Mini Holland money but the results are still awaited.

Guiliani also said, “We also reduced auto emissions by making our taxi fleet more fuel-efficient, speeding bus travel through dedicated lanes and encouraging walking and cycling.”

So why are the bus lanes in Lea Bridge Road being replaced by cycle lanes when cyclists are allowed to use them and there have been hardly any reported accidents between these vehicles in the past 11 years?

If this goes ahead not only will it cause serious congestion but the 55 bus service will probably very quickly lose its recent ‘Most improved in London’ award by Transport for London.

Trevor Calver Chingford