Dartford-Thurrock Crossing: Air Pollution
(asked on 15th September 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the effect of the reduction in the number of crossings made on the Dartford Crossing during the covid-19 outbreak on air quality in the surrounding areas.
Highways England continuously monitor air quality on the Dartford Crossing and operate two automatic air quality stations either side of the A282. Monitoring station ID51 is located next to the northbound carriageway and monitoring station ID52 is next to the southbound carriageway.
The measured monthly average nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations between January and August (covering the COVID-19 lockdown period) for 2019 and 2020 are provided in Table 1.
Table 1 Air Quality Monitoring Data
| January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | Average March to July | |
Site 51 NB | 2019 | 38.3 | 39.6 | 26.4 | 42.5 | 30.8 | 32.8 | 28.9 | 30.1 | 32.3 |
2020 | 21 | 13.6 | 16.7 | 20.2 | 25 | 24 | 18.6 | 30.7 | 20.9 | |
Site 52 SB | 2019 | 71.6 | 67.9 | 61.7 | 46.5 | 55.3 | 53.2 | 55.1 | 50.2 | 54.4 |
2020 | 58.1 | 51.8 | 43 | 32.7 | 35.3 | 38.4 | 42.4 | 42.7 | 38.4 | |
As shown in Table 1 the impact of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions has led to a reduction in measured NO2 concentrations between March and July 2020 (bold figures), which corresponds to a reduction in traffic flows between the same time period.