Clean Air Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester (GM) is taking action to improve air quality on local roads – now and for future generations.
All ten local authorities have worked together to develop the Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan. This will help bring nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels on local roads within legal limits by 2024. The final Clean Air Plan has now been approved by the councils, following a public consultation and further development work.
It includes a Greater Manchester-wide Clean Air Zone, which is anticipated to launch on 30 May 2022. More than £120m in government funding will also be available to support eligible Greater Manchester businesses, people and organisations to move to cleaner vehicles before the Zone is introduced.
The Club will be making a representation on behalf of members, however, if members themselves want to get involved the more input the better.
Please visit Clean Air Greater Manchester for more information and please also share with anyone who might be interested, or visit the consultation here: https://cleanairgm.com/consultation
Comments
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I was pleased to see those of us who only pass through GM on a motorway are unlikely to be affected.
"…Most roads managed by Highways England, such as motorways and trunk roads, will not be included, with a few exceptions."
My commiserations go to members/residents affected.
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Excellent news, well done MCR I hope other metropolis’s take note & start to ban ice cars & take other forms of improvements to aid the health of the populace👍🏻
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MCR gets my support just for actually caring enough to set the wheels(any wheels) in motion re cleaner air👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻
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It’s all in the link.
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I have no objection to the creation of this or any other clean air zones as traffic pollution has a terrible impact on health, especially young children. What disappoints me is that it is not done nationally like it is in Germany. I suppose in the future when we eventually get road pricing such schemes will easily be built in.
David
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I agree with you, joined up thinking is needed, my suggestion is-don’t include Politicians in any of the stages from start to finish👍🏻
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Yes, it needs an integrated approach. Any new build, be it domestic or commercial to include eco friendly power solutions, a really good transport system, affordable by all, to get folks back onto public transport etc....
This piecemeal approach is woefully inadequate, has been for decades. GM has been a nightmare conurbation to travel to and through for decades. It’s somewhere we seldom go, despite being only 40 miles away. You can sit and watch TV on some of the big gantries they have in place, it takes that long to crawl around. Once every decade is our married average of a visit across there.....a football match, a cycling event, delivering an item, and a shop visit that had us vowing not to return. Horrible to get to from here, horrible to get through or around. It looks very interesting, in fact I said to OH I wouldn’t mind another look around Old Trafford and the Cathedral, but it would be on train if it’s possible. That of course would be time consuming........
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Rather like London, this is now a city I will not visit - knowingly.
If you wish to charge then be prepared for a drop in footfall at your local shops.
The next thing will be charging for car parking on a Sunday. This happened in Tunbridge Wells and was known as the 'Church goer's Tax'.
Where will it all end?
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I'm glad to see this move being made by GM.
We lived in Radcliffe/Bury for some years and worked in and around what is now the inner suburbs and towns of GM. It was a nightmare to negotiate over 30 years ago and obviously hasn't improved with an increase in the volume of traffic. I hate having to go anywhere near the centre of the city nowadays although we would like to venture in without the car to see how much we recognise.
It was a good place to be in your early twenties, a hive of musical innovation.
Whether the club will see a downturn in numbers to Burrs Park is debatable. The city sites seem to do well enough.
With regard to Pliers comments can she let me know whether GM have now re-integrated the whole system into their control and when they did it if they did. Thanks.
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The £10 charge will certainly hit motorhome owners with euro 5 engines and below.
Whilst I am all for cleaner air, to impose this charge on the whole of Greater Manchester seems severe.
In my case I am 5 miles from the M60 and only 2 miles from the Derbyshire border. I would never venture into the city centre with the MH.
I am not sure where the cameras are but it could be the case that as soon as I take the MH out to be serviced, to fill up with diesel, or out on a trip I will incur the £10 charge for travelling a few miles.
I have already submitted my views to the consultation !
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The opening post informed us that £120Million Government Backing is supporting this. The Government backing is National for the local authorities to access.
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If it’s the same as the one in Bath, which I believe it is, it isn’t particularly all encompassing. I strayed into this as we headed north from Salisbury a few weeks ago and went online to pay up. Only to learn that it didn’t include any cars / motorbikes or vans with the euro 6 engine like ours. Basically it only seemed to affect HGV’s and older vans. Whilst it was nice not to have to fork out and I would have avoided it if I had realised it was there. Surely it needs to stop more of the older cars as well as vans and HGV’s if it is to make much difference.
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That may be the case but they are leaving it up to local authorities how they implement such schemes and as such the schemes could be different depending what place you are in. I would suggest it would be more practical if they were operating to the same plan across the country.
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As far as I am concerned, the genie left the lamp in the early 1980’s. Where and when I grew up, you didn’t need a car to go to school, to meet up with friends, to do all but a very big shop. Schools were local, buses were frequent, on time and very cheap. I and my family could go anywhere in South Yorks for 10p for an adult, 2p for a child. You even had a free bus pass for school. Buses were very busy, but went absolutely all over. So the vast majority of workers, of all kinds, miners, steelworkers, teachers, bankers, shop assistants, council workers etc.... everyone used the buses.
My family never had a car, most of my friends didn’t have cars, or if they did, they were used at weekends or special occasion. People lived closer to their work, went to school locally, enjoyed themselves locally more. We used trains for journeys further afield. All that changed in the 1980’s, and everyone had to change with it. Work was further away, schools started to vie for pupils, the buses were de regulated, shopping habits changed with the big supermarkets going out of town. You needed a car far more, just for daily living.
Once you have had one, you don’t want to give it up. For many, ownership of a car represents independence and a better life. For many women, it represents safety. We are now nearly all travellers of one kind of another, and only cars/vehicles give us this true freedom. But the health cost of that is now being seen in a variety of ways. The answers appear very piecemeal at the moment.
I have just checked our 3 vehicles out. We can take our 50 year old MG in free of charge. We can take our huge Jeep Wrangler in free of charge. The MH isn’t welcome though. Only to drive through.
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Wherenext, as far as I know, there are still 2 independent companies who have contracts to operate buses in Manchester. The contracts have 2 / 3 years to run, and negotiations to cancel the contracts have failed and the matter is being referred to the courts.
We were at the Man City v Arsenal game a few weeks ago, an announcement was made at halftime informing people that, due to operational problems, there would be no bus service from the ground into the city centre after the match.
What a shambles!
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Didn’t know things were that bad Pliers, it is indeed bad for the City.
This is an interesting little video, some very salient points highlighting the legacy of the 1980’s.
There’s an awful lot of work to be done to encourage folks to leave their cars behind in places. In other places, more rural, it will be even more difficult.
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There’s an awful lot of work to be done to encourage folks to leave their cars behind in places. In other places, more rural, it will be even more difficult.
In many cases it will not be more difficult as it will be impossible due to the reduction in public transport infrastructure. So many route and frequency reductions make it not feasible.
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I think what they are trying to do in Manchester is reasonable. They want to clean up the air to a generally acceptable level. They are starting by excluding pre- Euro 6 vehicles, likely to be at least 8 years old. Those entering with dirty vehicles pay the penalty.
We have created these large congested cities which are very dirty and unhealthy places, concentrating too many people and vehicles, too much infrastructure in a restricted space, and grown them bigger until they are dirty overcrowded monsters.
As far as visiting Greater Manchester or London etc is concerned, there is no change of Mrs nockle and I doing that. We will continue to avoid them like the plague.
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I suppose I'm old enough to remember past pollution levels when the buildings of virtually every UK city were black with soot and grime and smog was a regular feature. Respiratory illnesses reduced life expectancy. Now we have a less visible pollution problem but still extremely unhealthy for us and the planet. So moves to improve things are welcome. I see there is a three year exemption (if I've read things correctly) and the changeover will gradually take effect but we'll be seeing more of these moves towards cleaner air and will have to adapt in the long term.
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Thanks Pliers.
Our local AM (Welsh MP) had a surgery in our local village hall the other day as part of a survey she is undertaking to gauge the constituents needs vis-a-vis Public Transport. It was one of her main pledges in the recent elections to try to do something about it so MiL and quite a few other regular users of what constitutes a bus service had their say. Hopefully things will eventually improve for them.
Locally the Welsh Government have been trialing a reduction in speed limit on the main arterial route to the M56, the one that goes past Queensferry and Sealand RAF camp from the A55 for those in the know. They brought it down to 50mph as a pollution reducing effort and they state that it was successful in reducing the emission levels quite significantly. Not everyone kept to the limits and there was no enforceable punishment but they decided to now make it a compulsory limit with appropriate speeding fines, presumably done via average speed cameras.
I have started to see these pollution reducing limits elsewhere on my travels and wonder how widespread they are becoming. Any improvement in the quality of the air will help.
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We have created these large congested cities which are very dirty and unhealthy places, concentrating too many people and vehicles, too much infrastructure in a restricted space, and grown them bigger until they are dirty overcrowded monsters.
Having lived in Liverpool and Manchester between them for 18 years I cannot remember them being anything but dirty and unhealthy. The air is just as polluted now but from an increase in vehicle usage whereas 50 years ago the pollution came from chimneys and a reduced number of vehicles with higher polluting engines than todays models but less of them.
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is reduction of the speed limit in the name of reducing pollution just another excuse to lower the limit? I bet many big cars struggle to maintain top gear at 50mph. Around the country loads of NSL are being reduced to 50 or 40 .... also under the name of safety.
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It wasn't an excuse ED. It actually worked. They monitored the air over an extensive period. And it wasn't that hard to keep to 50 in top. Other gears are allowed.
I think you have to bear in mind that there have been a couple of high profile cases of councils and DoT being alerted to coroners findings that Traffic Pollution had a significant impact in some young adults deaths. If they don't do something then they are going to be sued or prosecuted.
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When driving on the Manchester motorway system be very alert.Two weeks ago our son and his girlfriend were nearly killed on the M67 when "youths" were lobbing bricks at cars on the motorway near Stockport./4 cars were hit.Thanks to good fortune nobody was killed.
A half brick came through the rear window of their car and left deep scratch marks down the back ot the driver's seat.
Manchester is a place through which we have to drive to get westwards or to visit his OH's family-not somewhere we would go to otherwise,cleaner air or not!
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