World Automotive Free Day: why drivers are being inspired to ditch their automobiles

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World Automotive Free Day: why drivers are being inspired to ditch their automobiles


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hursday (22 September) is World Automotive Free Day. Drivers are being inspired to provide their automobile a relaxation for the day and go for extra environmentally pleasant strategies of transport to slash emissions. With over one billion motor automobiles on the roads across the globe, it’s onerous to disregard the air pollution, noise and hazard they produce.

A current research discovered that 9% of Automotive Free July individuals plan on completely lowering their automobile use. And World Automotive Free Day is on a mission to “re-imagine our streets round folks”.

However what’s World Automotive Free Day? Right here is all the pieces you want to know.

What’s World Automotive Free Day?

Managed by Residing Streets, the purpose of World Automotive Free Day is to make the streets safer and higher for strolling and wheeling.

“Which means sharing concepts, prompting conversations and constructing communities day-after-day,” its web site reads. “It additionally means working collectively in order that we are able to make progress one metropolis, one group or one road at a time. Who says we solely get in the future a 12 months to think about car-free streets?”

For Automotive Free July, greater than 1,000 folks took half within the occasion, which challenged drivers to go utterly automobile free for per week or the entire month of July.

Automotive drivers have been inspired to switch their weekly grocery store, commute or faculty run with a low-carbon transport different.

How do automobiles hurt the setting?

Transport emissions make up 27% of all UK greenhouse gasoline emissions and automobiles account for over half of this whole, with consultants hoping World Automotive Free Day will make a distinction.

Main pollution additionally come from automobiles. They embody particulate matter, that are tiny substances that may injury folks’s lungs by contributing to atmospheric haze. Nitrogen oxides are fashioned when gasoline burns due to oxygen and nitrogen reacting with each other. Hydrocarbons are additionally emitted by exhaust pipes. They’re a poisonous compound of carbon and hydrogen.

Lastly, carbon monoxide, probably the most well-known, is emitted when the carbon in gasoline doesn’t totally burn.

World Automotive Free Day can be useful when it comes to selling different modes of transport, similar to biking.

One in every of Liverpool’s busiest roads, the Strand, will likely be reworked right into a stage for a programme of free wholesome actions. It runs alongside town’s waterfront and normally handles greater than 1,000 automobiles an hour on a traditional working day.

Cllr Dan Barrington, Liverpool Metropolis Council’s cupboard member for transport and local weather change, mentioned: “World Automotive Free Day is a chance for everybody to attempt a special manner of getting from A to B that’s higher for them and the planet.

“As a society we have to rely much less and fewer on the automobile and transfer in the direction of a extra balanced energetic journey method – with a larger use of public transport too.

“The advantages are there for all to see – more healthy our bodies, more healthy minds and a more healthy planet.”

Public bus providers in Guernsey will likely be free to all passengers for the day, with the native authorities hoping it would encourage islanders to “see its comfort”.


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