Councillors have called for the Mayor of London to make all buses operating from Holloway Bus Garage zero emissions models.

The calls are the latest efforts in a 5 year-long campaign that began when it was revealed under the previous Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, that less than 25% of buses operating from Holloway Bus Garage were less polluting hybrid models.

Thanks to efforts by the current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, by October 2019 all buses operating from the garage will be Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) compliant and 27% of all buses operating from the site will be electric models, an improvement on just 1 in 10 buses currently operating from the garage being electric.

However, councillors for Junction ward and Cllr Claudia Webbe (Executive Member for Environment and Transport at Islington Council) have demanded that faster progress is made to ensure all buses operating from the garage are zero emissions models to help tackle poor air quality.

Data recently collected by City Hall’s ‘Breathe London’ monitoring sensors have found Holloway Bus Garage to be a worrying ‘hotspot’ for elevated levels of air pollution*. The sensors have found that average readings for Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) are at 64.5µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre) indicating that the location is likely to exceed the annual limit for Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), and that on several occasions each week NO2 levels exceed 200µg/m3.

Cllr Janet Burgess, councillor for Junction ward, said:

“Holloway Bus Garage sits in the middle of a densely populated residential area and it’s our job as local councillors to do everything we can to make the operators and TfL minimise the impact it has on the lives of local people. Pollution levels remain far too high in the area around the bus garage and it’s time that more was done, and quickly, to cut out these toxic emissions entirely.”

Cllr Claudia Webbe, Executive Member for Environment and Transport at Islington Council, added:

“We’re determined to do all that we can to improve air quality in Islington, as it is quite literally a matter of life and death for some people. The Mayor has made some progress in moving to less polluting buses operating from the bus garage, but his own data makes it crystal clear that pollution remains shockingly high because of these dirty buses. We must urgently see only zero emissions models operating from the garage to prevent the damaging impact exposure to poor air quality can have on local people’s health.”

Cllr Webbe and the three councillors for Junction ward – Cllr Burgess, Cllr Comer-Schwartz and Cllr Chapman – have jointly written to the Mayor (see below) calling for him to commit that all buses operating from the Holloway Bus Garage will be zero emissions models by the end of 2020 or for a timetable for when all buses will be zero emissions models to be produced.

*https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/first-breathe-london-data-published