Revealed: What Clean Air Scheme will mean for you
THE lid was lifted on Greater Manchester’s new Clean Air Zone (CAZ) plans after years of controversy, cross words, and one big U-turn.
The decision to ‘pause’ the original CAZ - which would have introduced daily charges for taxis, vans, lorries, buses and coaches which did not meet emissions standards - came in February 2022. It was a huge moment for Andy Burnham, the mayor who has ‘carried the can’ on clean air, Bury council leader Eamonn O’brien told journalists at the joint-press conference on Wednesday (December 13).
After version one of CAZ was halted, Greater Manchester leaders asked the government - which imposed the legal direction on the region to clean up its air in the first place - for more time to tackle the air quality issue. They were given until 2026 to address it; a two-year extension.
That extension was asked for so ‘the full impact’ of the roll-out of the Bee Network public transport system could be felt, Mr Burnham said.
Speaking at the GMCA’S offices on Oxford Road in Manchester city centre, he unveiled plans for a new ‘investment-led approach’ to solving the clean air problem that won’t see any vehicles charged for driving in Greater Manchester. The decision to pause the programme back in 2022 also led to the thousands of signs in and around the cityregion having ‘under review’ stickers slapped on them. But now the mayor hopes the signs will go soon, too.
This plans still need to be approved by the government, with it being presented to ministers next week. However, leaders here are confident it will ‘take people with it’ and clean the air quicker compared to a congestion charge zone for the ‘city core’ in Manchester and Salford.
●●HOW will the new clean air zone work?
In short, the new CAZ isn’t really a clean air zone. The Greater Manchester proposal is to have no charges for motorists at all.
Instead, some £86 million will be used to improve the bus fleet to zero-emission vehicles, support taxi drivers to upgrade their cabs to ‘cleaner’ cars, and spend money on managing traffic flows in ‘the city core’ of parts of Manchester and Salford.
This investment - £51.2 million for 64 new electric buses and depot improvements, £30.5 million for a Clean Taxi Fund, and £5 million for road upgrades focusing on Regent Road and Quay Street - comes against the backdrop of the Bee Network.
The network is Greater Manchester’s new public transport system, which has seen buses taken into public control for the first time in decades.
Those services integrate with Metrolink trams and the Bee Bike cycle hire scheme, so passengers can purchase one ticket for multiple modes of getting around - and will be able to ‘tap and go’ once it’s finished.
At the moment, trams and bikes are already under public control.
But only certain bus services in the west of the city-region have come under the TFGM remit, namely those across Bolton, Wigan and parts of Bury and Salford.
Services in the northern side of the city-region, including Oldham, Rochdale, and the remainder of Bury will become Bee Network buses in March 2024.
The final third - south Manchester, Tameside, Stockport, and Trafford comes in January 2025.
The encouraging signs, from Mr Burnham’s point of view, are that bus patronage has risen by eight per cent across the board since the Bee Network launched. The rise has also been greater in franchised areas, he added, taking passenger numbers back to pre-pandemic levels.
And the thinking behind the new CAZ is that improvements to the public transport system will get more people out of their cars and on to more efficient, and more environmentally friendly, modes of transport.
The hope is to have a zero-emission Bee Network fleet by 2032 ‘at
street level’, the mayor added, with trams already running on renewable electricity.
“The consequence of having buses back under public control, we can control the bus fleet and the pace of decarbonisation,” he told reporters. “That’s exactly what we are doing.”
●●WHY are they doing this?
After the original CAZ was dumped, Greater Manchester leaders went back to the government with a pitch for an ‘investment-led’ plan five months later.
There was then radio silence, according to Eamonn O’brien, who is the GMCA’S lead on clean air.
Eventually, he added, the government came back at the start of this year and asked leaders here to show how the scheme would work compared to a city centre congestion charge.
In the months since, there’s been a review of how the national bus retrofitting scheme operates.
That put a slight delay on things, Coun O’brien explained, and it means the Greater Manchester plan is being sent down to London next week.
The reason why this public transport-focused plan has been chosen is
because ‘modelling shows we can clean up the air quicker and not introduce charges’, the GMCA says.
“It’s a simple plan but a lot of modelling has gone behind it,” Coun O’brien added.
“The reason we can do something differently is we are doing something no-one else in the country is [with the Bee Network]. This plan chooses the carrot, not the stick.”
Modelling for the new plans, they added, showed ‘the investment-led, noncharging plan would achieve compliance for legal limits for nitrogen dioxide in 2025’.
That modelling, he went on, suggested there would be 12 excedances of permitted niterogen dioxide levels in 2025 if nothing was done. If they followed the city centre congestion charge model, there
would be eight exceedances in 2025, and two in 2026, he added.
It means that, given the recent history of the backlash to the first CAZ, leaders here are pinning their hopes on a charge-free solution because it avoids ‘creating the risk of financial hardship for local people’.
●●WHEN will all this happen?
The plan needs to be given final sign-off at the Greater Manchester Air Quality Administration Committee on December 20, which has been recommended to get the green light. Once approved, it will head down to London -because introducing this plan is not something Greater Manchester can do alone.
“It really is over to the government,” Mr Burnham concluded the press conference. “They have to decide this. We think we have given the government something they have been increasingly saying they want.
“We are the first place in the country to show it can be done in a better way. My plea is do not delay. We want to get on with things. Let’s start 2024 with clarity. Let’s take the signs down and get on with the investment-led approach.”
His final line also indicated the region’s own willingness to pull the CAZ signs down which are currently blazened with the ‘under review’ stickers. Mr Burnham said that request will be made to government next week, as the signs are no longer needed.
However, the cameras are going to stay, he said. “I would not want the cameras to come down,” the Mayor replied under questioning about their future.
“The camera infrastructure would significantly enhance public safety in Greater Manchester.
“As I said, GMP are attaching a much higher priority to policing the road system and public transport than they have before. Greater Manchester, for historical reasons, has a lower level of ANPR technology in place across the road system.
“The introduction of the cameras has hugely increased [GMP’S] capability to police the roads, such that the number of serious crimes that have been brought to charge and prosecution has been quite something.”
Ultimately, the fate of the new CAZ and the old one’s signs are in the government’s hands. But dirty air is already in Greater Manchester’s lungs.
‘We are the first place in the country to show it can be done in a better way’