Air pollution contributes to 9400 deaths annually in London and diesel vehicles are considered a major source of lethal air pollutants. Consequently, the UK government announced its intention to ban diesel vehicles by 2040 to achieve a sustainable zero-carbon road transport system. Since no empirical studies have used a bottom-up approach to seek Londoners' views, it is therefore worth investigating the public opinion regarding this forthcoming ban. This paper aims to fill this research gap by taking London as a case study. A survey was designed, and fieldwork was conducted to distribute questionnaires to Londoners. Completed questionnaires were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings revealed that the majority of Londoners would be in favour of the ban if they were sufficiently exposed to the appropriate sources of information and were favourably disposed towards environmental protection measures. The results also showed that Londoners were more likely to switch to electric vehicles (EVs) if they were offered generous incentives and encouraged to use scrappage schemes. The present study makes a strong case for enforcing the ban well before 2040. The significance of this research is to provide clearer signals regarding the future of diesel vehicles, which in turn will strengthen the EV policy and uptake.

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The air cargo industry is hugely important to national economies, trade, and development. Thus far, there has been limited research on the landside freight industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of how alterations in the air cargo industry impact on its landside freight counterpart. It also seeks to explore the potential opportunities and challenges this presents, as well as the measures that can be taken to mitigate unsustainable development for the landside freight industry. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the views of key stakeholders, freight industry experts, and other professionals. Our findings show that, if the airport expansion went ahead, the opportunities would generally outweigh the challenges. Increased freight activities and other positive spinoffs would result in the long-term. Increased freight activities and employment were the prime positive implications. Conversely, increased delays due to congestion was the main negative implication. Measures suggested to mitigate the adverse effects of the London Heathrow Airport (LHR) expansion entailed strengthening of consolidation centre efforts, freight collaboration, intelligent booking systems, use of low-carbon technologies, smart scheduling for revising the timetabling of deliveries, and greater use of rail transport for air cargo. The research highlights novel insights regarding existing freight-related issues from industry and academic experts, and further thoughts in relation to increased cargo activities stemming from the LHR expansion.

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