Putney Air Quality, 2010 to 2026
Annual NO2 at the Putney High Street kerbside, the high-street diffusion tube, and background sites in Putney and Barnes, with markers for the bus upgrades, the Low Emission Bus Zone, and ULEZ phases.
Kerbside NO2 on Putney High Street has fallen from about 110 µg/m³ in 2015 to about 32 µg/m³ in 2026, finally crossing under the 40 µg/m³ UK legal limit.
Monitoring sites
- WA7 Kerbside, automatic monitor on Putney High Street, 1.75m inlet, about 0.5m from the kerb.
- WA8 Facade, automatic monitor on the same building, 4.85m inlet. Decommissioned January 2024.
- W24 McDonalds, diffusion tube on Putney High Street outside the McDonald's sign. Continuous monthly sampling.
- RI1 Castelnau, automatic roadside on the Barnes approach to Hammersmith Bridge.
- WA9 Felsham Road, automatic urban background, about 600m off Putney High Street.
- RI2 Barnes Wetlands, automatic suburban background, just west of Hammersmith Bridge.
Reading the chart
The Combine button averages a group's selected sites into a single line. The All and None buttons toggle every pill in a group at once. Toggling between Absolute and Index changes the y-axis. The Baseline dropdown sets the start year of the chart in both views, and also anchors the 100-point in Index view.
Hollow dashed markers are years with low data capture (under 75%). Wandsworth's 2024 Annual Air Quality Status Report flags WA7 and WA9 for 2022 and 2023 as "insufficient valid data".
Reference lines: the UK and Wandsworth annual mean limit of 40 µg/m³, and the WHO 2021 guideline of 10 µg/m³ which Wandsworth adopted as an interim target in September 2023.
Putney HS Roadside Increment
The roadside increment is the difference between roadside NO2 concentration and urban background NO2 concentration. It isolates the contribution of local road traffic by subtracting the regional and London-wide component that affects all sites. It is a standard metric in air quality assessment, used by Defra, the LAQN and the AURN to evaluate the local impact of road traffic and of interventions intended to reduce it.
On this chart it is calculated per year as the average of the selected Putney High Street sites (WA7, WA8, W24) minus the average of the selected Putney Background sites (WA9, RI2).
Common questions
Is Putney air quality improving?
Which intervention reduced NO2 the most?
What is the "roadside increment"?
What is sparse data, and why are some markers hollow?
Linked charts
Putney Bridge Traffic, 1986 to 2026
Motor vehicles per day across Putney Bridge (A219) from 1986, combining DfT AADF, the TfL Thames Screenline, monthly Vivacity camera counts and ATC tube counts, with a 3-year trend line.
Putney Bridge Bus & Traffic Speed
AM-peak bus speeds on the nine routes at the Putney Bridge junction (TfL iBus), with weekday traffic speeds across Putney, Chiswick, Kew and Wandsworth bridges.
Putney Bridge Traffic by Vehicle Type, 1986 to 2024
Putney Bridge traffic split by vehicle type, cars, LGVs, HGVs, buses, motorcycles and pedal cycles, from DfT and TfL sources with a combined smoothed view.
Putney Bridge Traffic North & South, Vivacity Camera, Jul 2023 to Jan 2026
Daily vehicle counts from Vivacity cameras on Putney Bridge by direction and vehicle class, July 2023 to January 2026, shown as a 28-day centred rolling average.