Several Overground ticket offices have closed recently following installation of smarter ticket machines. Queen’s Park ticket office is still on the danger list. New machines have just been installed and their use will be monitored for 3 months. If this falls below a certain threshold, the axe will fall. So keep buying your local and long distance rail tickets there if you want to keep the ticket office open. Weekdays are your best bet, as the it sometimes closes at weekends.
The CAPS project has moved forward rapidly since our first posting. Brent has confirmed that they can let us use their big mobile monitoring machine either in July/August or later if we need time to agree a suitable site close to Salusbury Road. This machine measures NOX and particulate pollution from diesel by time of day. We will also hang small diffusion tubes on lampposts. The tubes record NOX only over a period.
Friends of the Earth (FOE) will help with a project in the autumn that involves children and parents. We are also liaising with Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn and Brent FOE. We have been pleased to learn that the new Mayor of London plans to launch a major consultation on combatting air pollution soon and that Brent will be consulting on a revised Air Quality Action Plan. When we have results from our monitoring project we expect to make recommendations for action by individuals, Brent, the Mayor and probably national government too.
The CAPS group met on 1st June with officers from Brent Council and national FOE in support. You can find a link to the notes of that meeting and more information about CAPS on our Environment Action Group page.
QPARA responded to Brent’s recent consultation on on-street parking and charges following a discussion between members at our May meeting. You can read the letter we sent to Brent here: Parking consultation QPARA response May 2016