Transport: the equal right to breathe

• CLLR Serge Lourie writes: ' . . BUT nothing quite caught the imagination like charging 4x4s extra to park. There was a radical element about it, a revolutionary sense of a shift in what was possible . . '

When I found out that Bamber Gascoigne could park his electric car in some London boroughs for free, but not in Richmond, I mentioned this to some council officers and councillor colleagues, and the idea filtered down in such a way that - when they met to work out whether a green strategy for residential parking was possible - nobody at the meeting could agree who had actually dreamed up the big idea: to charge the most polluting cars more in the controlled parking zones (CPZs).

By the time we actually introduced the idea, in April and May the following year, we were pretty confident it would work. It is a tribute to the council that they managed to make it happen in the short space of time between the meeting in my room and implementation. Even without global warming, it seems a shame not to make use of such an inexpensive resources as wind, waves, tide and solar energy.

The energy team on the council are now putting this enthusiasm into concrete form. There are already photovoltaic cells generating electricity on the roof of the Civic Centre, and the next project is to investigate a combined heat and power plant, burning wood pellets from the council's woodlands, to cover half of the council's electricity needs. Meanwhile the weekly recycling rate is now over 42 per cent, one of the highest in London.

But nothing quite caught the imagination like charging 4x4s extra to park. There was a radical element about it, a revolutionary sense of a shift in what was possible which crystallised the great frustration people have about the vast four-wheel drive vehicles, like armoured cars, that move around London's narrow streets.

In some ways, that symbolism was its main importance. My team certainly aimed at a symbolic quick green win, once we had taken office, to show they were serious. Our first act was therefore to pension off the mayor's gas-guzzling Bentley, which was sold off and replaced with a Prius. Symbolism is vital, and so it was with the parking charges.

But making the plans work is also about politics. It means finding ways of knitting the different council services together. If dog mess is a problem for mothers walking their children, then the street officers will have to be involved. So will the animal welfare officer, who can give talks at school assemblies and educate the child dog-owners, and through them, their parents - it's about thinking outside the box.

• Back the pedestrians: Whatever the tabloids might tell you, there are more journeys by foot than there are using any other form of transport. Walking matters, and it particularly matters for the local economy. If people find walking dirty and dangerous then they will stop using the local shops. That is why Islington is creating new pedestrian areas by removing an unsightly roundabout at Highbury corner and working towards a new pedestrian area at the Angel. It is why Cardiff is doing the same in their city centre. It is why Portsmouth has introduced a 20 mph limit on their residential roads, which has succeeding in reducing speeds by about 4 mph - and despite some difficulty getting the police to enforce it - has made the roads there safer.

• Back the cyclists: No UK city has yet gone the taken the example of Paris and provided cycles all over the city centre, though London has shown signs of planning to. Certainly no UK city has come anywhere near the kind of family cycle use that you find in the Dutch or Scandinavian cities. But Lib Dem councils are beginning to see their role as encouraging cycling. Islington has been restoring two-way cycle access in all those places where complex traffic management schemes have undermined it. They have identified about 50 places across the borough where there are barriers to cycling that could be removed.

• Back the car sharers: The great benefit of car sharing is that it means people don't have to own their own cars. It cuts traffic, and therefore pollution and carbon emissions, but it also provides a way that poorer households can get access to a car if they need to. Islington's Car Club now has 100 shared vehicles on the road and they are now aiming for 500.

• Tackle the council's vehicles: It is more than a decade since South Somerset led the way converting their vehicles, and the possibilities are now endless. Electricity, LPG, oxygen, methane, hydrogen have all been tried by one local authority or other. Probably the only real option now is to end the experiments and review the whole vehicle fleet, as Oldham is now doing. But it still means giving a lead by testing out the latest technology. It also means encouraging finding incentives to get people to give up cars, like bike vouchers or Car Club membership or organising a workplace travel plan for staff (like Sutton has).