Air Quality at the Hallam Ave Monitoring Station for the last 2 years to Nov 08

The graphs attached show the air quality at the Hallam Ave monitoring station for the last 2 years to Nov 08. You’ll notice there is no real change in the mean (average) results for the whole time, including after the tunnel opened. There are spikes which occurred on days when all of Sydney had high pollution for various reasons.
There is a slight increase at the end of Nov, this could be the narrowing of Epping Rd, but this can be checked in the next 6 months.

AIR QUALITY SINCE TUNNEL OPENING

The air quality monitoring stations unfortunately are not ideally set up to monitor a point source of pollution such as that coming from a stack, but they give a general indication of air quality. At first when there was a toll free period, there were some quite high levels seen. This has generally settled down in the last few months since motorists had to pay for tunnel use. Vehicle usage is only an average of 60,000 a day which is well below the predicted figures by Connector motorways. The levels for fine particles PM10 and PM 2.5 are similar to last year, although this has been difficult to compare since Connector refuse to give us a lot of the data from last year. Although it seems like it should be available from the website, it cannot be downloaded. Air quality last year was not great since there were a lot of traffic jams and many trucks associated with tunnel construction. So although it may appear to be similar, it is probably a lot higher than other areas on the North Shore.

THE NARROWING OF EPPING ROAD
As soon as the narrowing of Epping Rd begins, more vehicles will be funneled into the tunnel. This will ultimately mean more cars using the tunnel over the next 12 to 18 months. Air quality will continue to deteriorate as more motorists use the tunnel and more houses are built in the north western areas of Sydney. The stacks will continue to blow this dangerous pollution over our homes, schools and offices in every increasing levels.

PRIVATE MEMBERS BILL – ANTHONY ROBERTS
Anthony Roberts MP has just introduced a private members bill into parliament last week. The bill is to demand filtration of the Lane Cove Tunnel. The M5 East tunnel has now been given the go ahead for filtration in the last NSW budget, so the problem of dangerous air quality in those suburbs has finally been acknowledged. This bill will be considered in September when the parliamentarians come back from recess.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Please write today to any or all of the following politicians. All politicians in the upper and lower house will be considering this bill. We mainly need to convince the Labor politicians, since filtration of the LC Tunnel is now Liberal policy. As you know, Labor have a majority in both houses, so it is these guys we must address.

Please write today saying you demand filtration of the Lane Cove Tunnel and that residents’ health will be seriously affected in the next few years if it is not done. Please send the email today, and they will get it when they come back again in September.

The politicians to write to are:

Premier Morris Iemma:
thepremier@www.nsw.gov.au

Eric Roozendaal Minister for Roads:
enquiries.roads@roozendaal.minister.nsw.gov.au

John Watkins, Deputy Premier:
dp.office@watkins.minister.nsw.gov.au ; ryde@parliament.nsw.gov.au

Please write to any of the following Labor politicians off this link. It can be either in the Upper or Lower House as they all will be considering the bill at some stage:
http://www.nswalp.com/people/