London becomes 'low emission zone'
You'd be forgiven for not noticing, but London became a 'low emission zone' today.
Transport bods have launched a campaign to cut traffic pollution and improve the capital's air quality, which is currently the worst in Britain and among the poorest in Europe. The £49 million scheme will use big brother tactics to monitor the emissions of large diesel lorries, later expanding coverage to smaller commercial vehicles, and impose heavy fines on those exceeding EU exhaust limits. Naturally, haulage companies aren't too happy about it, but let's hope more will begin to take advantage of the greener freighting options available, whether it's barge transit or electric vehicles.
Confused? The Guardian have a great Q&A on the London Emission Zone here.
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Comments
Whilst it's difficult to object to the LEZ in principle - after all, who would not want to see London's air become cleaner - the problem with the current scheme is that it will fail to achieve what it claims it will. If you really wanted to make a difference to air quality you'd charge cars as well as trucks, but because it's not politically expedient to do so (what with car drivers being voters) they are left out.
To add to that, no-one is tremendously sure of the cost of monitoring the scheme versus potential revenues and in the likely event there's shortfall it's going to be Londoners picking up the tab.
In the meantime the road haulage industry gets left to pick its way through the muddled thinking behind it. Yes, trucks should be as clean as possible, and, oh look, the vast majority are. OK so the LEZ may help clean up a small proportion of the remainder, but if they belong to a big fleet chances are they, and their pollution, will be shifted somewhere else. A nice gift from Ken to the good people of Birmingham for instance.
Will it shift freight to other modes? Unlikely. Given that the vast majority of big fleets (which move the vast majority of freight in the capital) will be LEZ compliant anyway there's no reason to shift goods to a barge or what have you.
Posted by: Dom | February 5, 2008 9:49 AM
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