Air pollution and its causes have been a topic of discussion and concern across the globe for years, especially regarding the exhaust gas emissions from diesel vehicles.
In response, in 2016, London Mayor Sadiq Khan published his Air Quality Strategy with the goal of setting the most comprehensive and ambitious standards any world city is taking to tackle the problem of air pollution. The ultimate goal from this strategy and following legislation would result in the world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London by 2020, reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by half and ensuring 80 percent of central London meets the tough European legal limits for nitrogen dioxide (NO2).
In order to reach these air pollution reduction goals, the city needed to address one of the major contributors to the problem, the bus and taxi fleets used for public transportation. Private consumer vehicles are already held to strict emission standards, but London had yet to highly regulate the public transport system, which provided 4.9 billion passenger journeys in bus services alone in 2017. To meet emission standards by 2021, 5,000 Transport for London (TfL) buses, which aren’t already hybrid or electric vehicles, were required to be retrofitted with emission reducing technology. This would require quick implementation with trusted technology that could be monitored and tracked in real time across the city to maintain the strict emission standards.