16 June
Nottingham residents are being urged to take action this Clean Air Day (Thursday 16 June) to help contribute towards improving the quality of the city’s air.
The city has been taking great steps over many years to tackle poor air quality, including investing in one of the best public transport systems in the country – giving residents and visitors an excellent alternative to using the car and so helping them to do their bit for the environment.
Clean Air Day is an annual campaign to promote ways to tackle air pollution and spread awareness of the harmful effects of poor air quality, which causes up to 36,000 premature deaths in the UK each year.
In Nottingham, people are being urged to:
Leave the car at home and travel more actively
- Walk short journeys, or park further away and have a walk. Walking has great physical and mental health benefits
- Turn the school run into a school walk/cycle, even just a few times a week
- Cycling has fantastic health benefits. We have extensive cycle routes, secure cycle parking and great partner organisations to help people learn to cycle or gain confidence
Hop on public transport
- In Nottingham 95% of residents live within 400m of a bus stop
- With Robin Hood and nottinghamcontactless multi-operator ticketing, it’s so easy to hop on and go
- We have nine Park and Ride sites across the city
Don’t be idle, switch off your engine
- When you are stationary in a petrol or diesel car, turn your engine off – especially around schools. We have school streets in place across the city to make it safer and cleaner for children. Read more here.
Go electric
- Electric vehicles are often cheaper to run and maintain
- Are you a business owner? Why not take advantage of our Electric Van Experience and trial an electric van for free for 30 days?
We are working to improve air quality
The City Council is working hard to improve air quality through active travel schemes including building and upgrading cycle routes across the city and securing funding to build a new cycle and pedestrian bridge over the River Trent. It is also investing in public transport with 78 state-of-the-art electric single decker buses joining NCT’s fleet from 2023 and contactless payment and Robin Hood tickets making multi-operator travel so much easier. And it is increasing the use of electric vehicles by installing hundreds of Electric Vehicle charging points, ‘greening’ the council’s own fleet and promoting one of the cleanest taxi fleets in the country.
Portfolio Holder for Environment, Energy & Waste, Cllr Sally Longford, said: “We’re really proud of the ambitious work we’ve done to improve Nottingham’s air quality and want everyone to use Clean Air Day to work out what they can do to help.
“Transport emissions are one of the largest contributors to poor air quality, so we have been focusing a lot of our work on this area. We are supporting people to do their bit by providing high quality green public transport, improving active travel infrastructure and creating safe School Streets across the city. Clean air is so important for healthy lives, it affects everyone, and we can all take action to help improve it.”
