It doesn’t say in the report but in 2016 the monitor location was moved from the junction to where it is now. The old monitor was a bit further away from the traffic as well as being in a more open area. Hopefully this link will work to show where I think that was.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.0069406,-1.6197289,3a,78.8y,303.24h,98.55t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sXnMvyVdxd_dJMYM9xXPkng!2e0!5s20140801T000000!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

Apologies. Spotted it, attached I believe to a lamp post on the corner of the Jan Forster shop approx. 50m away from the centrepoint of the new junction. Out of interest what is the main reason/s which caused the jump from a NO2 annual mean of 20.2 in 2015 to 59.3 in 2017?

Agreed we need more vegetation along the whole High Street. It won’t make much difference to pollution levels though. Also, if you’re on the High Street pavement, the exhaust has to go past you before it hits the vegetation. We need to fix the problem rather than the symptoms. Reduce the through traffic. It’s not the A1 any more!

Hi Paul, there is an automatic monitoring station by the Salters Road junction but the official Council monitor giving the higher readings is outside the shops south of Woodbine Road.

Thanks Andrew, useful to see the guidance the Council will be working to.

The diffusion tubes we have reported on are the official ones used in the Council reporting. For the one at the top of the High Street this is about 40m from the Salters Road junction and in a location likely to be representative of air quality along that stretch of the road from Ivy Road to Woodbine Avenue, which is further than 100m.

The annual air quality status reports are here in case you haven’t already seen them. I haven’t spotted anything that says to only consider a subset but it’s possible I might have missed it?
https://newcastle.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/pollution/air-pollution/monitoring-air-quality

Couldn’t agree more about the need for proper integrated public transport, Stewart. Unfortunately the deregulation of buses in 1986 made this very difficult in the UK. Tyne and Wear also failed in their bid to try this through Quality Contracts a couple of years ago.

Every bus that travels down Gosforth H igh Street stops there, however. And the figures shown at a recent council meeting suggested that around 20-25% of the pollution on the High Street is caused by buses. The vast majority is caused by the 18,000 or so private vehicles that travel along there every day. Perhaps more folk on those buses would help!

It’s a dull technical point but AQ sites near major junctions don’t apply in the same way under European law, where the point is about representative road length. To quote DEFRAs own guidance:
The macro and micro siting criteria listed in Annex III of the AQD should be considered carefully when defining the subset of receptors for compliance assessment. The receptors should be at least 25m from major junctions and be representative of at least 100m road length. Please note that these siting criteria are different to those specified in TG16, which are typically at the highest pollution hotspot. Receptors within the carriageway of the road will be excluded from the subset except where there is normally pedestrian access to the central reservation.
(From the evidence package in https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/air_quality_guidance_given_on_no_2).

What this means is that it’s not easy to turn single diffusion tubes near junctions into straight EU compliance