HOW can we stop air pollution rising back to its pre-Covid lockdown levels?

We saw the air clear in direct relation to the disappearance of all but essential traffic from our roads.

Now, as the traffic is returning, so is the pollution.

During the lockdown, many of us developed good habits.

While the car stayed at home, we took daily exercise, walking, running and cycling, and have felt much better for it.

People noticed getting to particular places took much less time than they expected.

The average person walks at 3mph and cycles at 10mph, while in congested areas such as the centre of Colchester cars crawl at an average speed of 8mph.

So, the cyclist will get there first and the walker will take just over twice as long as the driver but almost always be healthier and happier thanks to the exercise.

How much difference to traffic levels could walking and cycling make?

The road traffic survey for 2018 reported that 56% of car journeys were less than five miles long, 6% were less than a mile and the average annual mileage for a car in the UK was 7,100.

How many of those short trips could be made without using the car?

How much would that reduce annual mileage?

Just as people trying to lose weight keep a food diary, keeping a driving diary soon shows us how much time we spend behind the wheel, how long our journeys are and why we make them.

As we come out of the lockdown, we have a golden opportunity to walk and bike and make the most of quieter roads.

If enough of us get out of our cars and do that, if enough people cut out commuting and work from home and enough meetings take place by video then the roads will attract more cyclists and we will have a virtuous circle.

On May 6, the government pledged £2bn to support “a new era in cycling” and some of that funding has been secured for Colchester town centre.

Actually, Covid-19 is directly responsible for this because the government is investing in order to bring people back to town centres to reboot the economy but must do it safely.

This means with social distancing and as little use of public transport as possible.

The borough and county councils have the new scheme in place from June 15.

It aims to re-allocate space in the town centre so that more is given to walkers and cyclists and less to cars.

There are traffic diversions, wider pavements, less kerbside parking and new pop up bicycle lanes.

Now it’s down to us who live in Colchester to use these temporary arrangements, give our feedback and demonstrate how much we want Colchester to be a cleaner, greener and healthier place.

Colchester’s clean air and cycling campaigning groups were deeply disappointed to hear that Essex County Council decided not to put in “an expression of interest” for government funding to turn Colchester into the “UK’s first all electric bus town”.

The pandemic has put the council under huge pressure and perhaps there were some serious drawbacks but the expression of interest form, available on the Department for Transport’s website, seemed straightforward and a detailed bid was not required until the next stage of the selection process.

I think signalling our green credentials and our vision at every opportunity must make it easier to attract new investment as it comes along. Colchester can be not just the oldest town but the cleanest and greenest as well.

The need for social distancing caused by Covid-19 is forcing us to rush through many pollution reducing measures which we had until now not managed on our own.

This may have an extraordinary result because the total number of deaths globally attributed to Covid-19 is now approximately 400,000 and in 2016 in the EU alone 400,000 premature deaths were attributed to air pollution.

If this is true, by giving us cleaner air to breathe Covid-19 may save more human lives globally than it succeeds in destroying.