Great Western Coffee Shop

according to a report just published.

Thought it would have decreased by more than 30 per cent.

Well, it's early days... But if we've seen the same report, it was talking about nitrogen dioxide, which I think is mostly from diesel engines. Buses are (till Monday) still running a normal service and there are lots of delivery vans driving round, so could be more drop in petrol-sourced pollutants. Plus, I wonder about domestic heating?

My perception - I live fairly close to the centroid of the built-up area of Bristol - is that the air tastes Alpine, and that I can actually see further.

I read somewhere that the number of lives saved due to cleaner air may actually match the number lost through Coronavirus...

I read that too - not sure if it was a local city stat, a country stat, or a worldwide one.  Maps online at the BBC showed NO2 pollution levels averaged over the last 10 days, and the same 10 days a year ago; we are told that this 10 day period is long enough to be significant.  But of course we can't believe everything we're told, even if it's on the BBC.

edit to add - reduced pollution maps - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52065140 .

Comparison maps - I have put them alongside each other as it was an awkward scroll in the original.

Note that NO2 - as I understand it - is just one component of a complex soup with CO2, particulates and probably many other things I don't understand in there as well.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/lessno2.jpg)

When I have taken the walk down to the local shop for supplies,the bus's I have seen are empty.

In my ideal World ,just wondering if they could cancel all the bus's in the Bristol area.

Then get taxi's to do the trips on a call the taxi company basis and then the taxi companys would bill the bus company for trips made.

Maybe start with a trial on Sundays only.

It would save on drivers premium wages paid on Sundays, fuel in the bus's and to a small extent maintainance.

I'm not sure how you keep people 2 metres apart in a taxi.

I also hate to say it, but some passengers are more important than others and - if we have it right - it's the important ones who are left on the buses. Getting to the care home to look after the people there is important; getting to Clovelly to buy an ice-cream on the beach this year is not.     

To some extent, you're looking at a move towards responsive travel and I'm not sure how well that has worked out so far - tried in countryside areas such as the Vale of Pewsey you've had the "Wiggly Bus" which wiggles where wanted between Devizes and Pewsey but with slashed transport volumes requirements, it could work in a more urban area.

When a train is replaced by a bus ... the a bus is replaced by a taxi ... when a trains is replaced by taxis, it strikes e that you're using more manpower rather than less much of the time.  And should the trial become something that's happening daily for an extended period, are you vehicles off the road to the extent they're going to be hard to bring back?

This is a time to look at extraordinary ideas - but remembering that we need to act / set things up with a priority for the current times, but with a view to preserving what we will probably need in future times.

If taxis were used it would be for single occupancy only,all the bus stops could have a phone number on them of the local taxi companies

I hear what you're saying - but I think you mean double occupancy - driver too, with a mixing in the same cabin of two homeship clusters which should not be within two metres of each other.  How many taxis in Bristol are like the London ones with a shield between the driver and passenger(s)?

One of the problems that GWR have is finding taxi firms willing to be called up to stations where rail replacement transport is needed at port notice.  Big reason being that taxi operators like the money to come through quickly and to be topped up with tips.  Sorry to say, but GWR has a shocking reputation for taking rather longer to pay than perhaps they should and taxis say "thank you, don't want that business".  Would another part of the First Group, or the local authority, be any quicker to pay or have an easier paperwork trail?

Steady on! Though I must bear in mind that your hill is higher than ours... up there in the eternal snows of Stan and Drew... But yes, it's definitely cleaner and clearer. Quieter too! Though I wonder for how long? Traffic seems to be a bit more this morning (Sat) (based purely on the evidence of noise through the window so not exactly definitive... )

Interestingly,  the WHO's advice is a minimum of 1m not 2m. This is easily achieved in those parks and beaches that were causing such outrage during the last week and isn't impossible even in taxis, with a  bit of thought.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

The official "advice" (i.e. instruction) says 1 m in France, and 1.5 m in Germany and the Netherlands. I think the experts in some places think 1 m is a bit close, and here, on top of that, the government thinks we're too dumb to cope with fractions and the concept of "minimum" at the same time so they rounded it up. So it's an "aim for" rather than an "or more".

The stuff coming out of a central heating boiler is mainly water and carbon dioxide if it's working properly, which may be offset by businesses not being heated - if they switched off. I recall looking down from Dundry during a temperature inversion a couple of decades ago and seeing a layer of filthy brown smog covering central Bristol  below, probably not noticeable from within it. That was probably nitrogen oxides from vehicles, and it will be that that is missing. That has certainly improved in the years since, and is probably now only "dreadful" on the official scale of pollution. Sadly, it will end, at least for a time, when traffic resumes.


That's a bit rum - only half of we British are rubbish at fractions. The other two-thirds are fine.

Yea but 1.5 is in decimals so does that make the 0.7 fine too.

True for gas boilers not so true for oil central heating boilers.

I expect that this helps as well (and not just in Bristol).... https://www.flightradar24.com/51.44,-0.45/7

To help get myself a view of "normal", I had a trawl around and found the following from FlightRadar showing a Friday evening towards the end of last month, and last Friday (27th March 2020).

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/fr_latefeb20.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net/pix/fr_latemar20.jpg)

....and lots of those in the latter view are apparently just pilot training/competency retainment flights (i.e. empty).

I don't think I have ever been in a house in Bristol with an oil central heating boiler, and I have been in many. Mains gas was available everywhere in the city by the time central heating became ubiquitous. It came later to the village where I now live, but most  have converted. There still around 4 million homes in Britain heated by oil, though there won't be any new ones within a couple of years. Oil is the first fossil fuel in the government's sights as we clean up.

In the early 1970s I knew a gas fitter/plumber who had switched to converting oil-fired boilers to the new-fangled North Sea gas almost full-time (this was in the area around Cambridge). I think it was the availability of conversion kits that made the difference - for houses built before a gas pipe was laid, converting to coal gas when one turned up was probably never feasible.

Further data - Bristol and other cities
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52113695



Let's just not just explore the options, but actually do it!!

Easy enough - we just all stay at home permanently.

Everyone staying at home clearly isn't going to happen though there probably is room for more working from home and other forms of working. Or indeed of not working. But what's not being explored or at least not mentioned in that article or any of the others I've seen on this, is how we can in the near future – later this year or next year – get around without returning to previous traffic patterns.

Revisiting a week later - what is still running this Sunday morning?

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/planesuk_20200405.jpg)

Looking at those showing call signs at Heathrow

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/planeslhr_20200405.jpg)

Bristol still has quite a few arrivals and departures scheduled, but nothing like as many as usual. Loganair have cancelled their two. One is from Birmingham, but I would imagine that was a "calling at" rather than to satisfy a demand for flights to and from Brum.