£100m spent – but CAZ plan is still off road
Future unknown nearly two years after stall
GREATER Manchester’s Clean Air Zone has cost nearly £100m so far as the future of the controversial scheme is still unknown.
The plan to charge vans, taxis, buses, lorries and coaches which do not meet emissions standards has been ‘under review’ for nearly two years.
The proposal for owners of these vehicles to face a daily fee for driving on almost all of the cityregion’s roads was paused a few months before it was set to be introduced in 2022 following a huge public backlash.
Transport bosses have published details of a revised scheme which would see all charges scrapped, with local leaders arguing that they are no longer needed to improve air quality.
The government, which agreed to push the deadline by which Greater Manchester must meet legal limits on pollution to 2026, will need to approve the new proposal - which involves offering cash for cabbies to upgrade their vehicles as well as buying new electric buses - before the Clean Air Zone can officially be scrapped.
Meanwhile, the scheme is still costing the taxpayer millions of pounds.
This includes paying around £375,000 a month for the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras installed to catch non-compliant vehicles.
These cameras have been used in criminal investigations and may be handed over to Greater Manchester Police.
More than £3m was spent on around 2,200 signs advertising the Clean Air Zone, around half of which were installed before being covered up with stickers saying ‘under review’.
Altogether, £32.7m has been spent on implementation and operational contract costs.
Another £32.7m has been spent on the development of the plans since 2017.
And £26.2m has been committed towards a financial support scheme which has seen some lorries, coaches and vans which would have faced daily penalties upgraded to cleaner models.
This includes £7.2m for the implementation and operation of the financial support scheme which was supposed to be covered by the charges.
By the end of November, 180 of the vehicle owners who have secured this funding have not upgraded their vehicles.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that £15m of this funding which went towards retrofitting existing buses might not have had the desired effect.
As of March, 1,153 buses in Greater Manchester were retrofitted to meet emissions standards, but the government is now reviewing whether retrofitting these buses at a cost of up to £16,000 each has reduced emissions as much as expected - or at all.
A further £5.3m has been spent on electric vehicle charging infrastructure for taxis. All of these costs are covered by the government.
A report published by Transport for Greater Manchester (TFGM) says that, assuming the government does not reach a decision on the new proposal before the end of the financial year, an additional £3.1m is forecast to be spent by March 2024.
In total, the government has given Greater Manchester £202.7m for the Clean Air Plan, most of which is for upgrading vehicles.
However, the financial support scheme has been paused since January 2022 when the Clean Air
Zone was suddenly put on hold.
Last year, transport bosses revealed that TFGM faced a multi-millionpound shortfall because it was tied into contracts with no money coming in from charges while it was drawing up new plans.
Since then, the government has given Greater Manchester an extra
£12.2m.
The new proposal, which was set out earlier this month, would see some £86m 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 £51.2m for 64 new electric buses and depot improvements, £30.5m for a Clean Taxi Fund and £5m for road upgrades focusing on Regent Road and Quay Street - comes amid an increase in the use of public transport.
Since buses were brought under public control as part of Greater
Manchester’s new Bee Network in September, there has been an eight per cent increase in the number of bus journeys taken.
But buses are still contributing to illegal levels of pollutions in some places.
Transport bosses say that deploying new zeroemission buses in problem areas, upgrading taxis to cleaner models and improving traffic flow in key locations, will bring air quality within the legal limits quicker than charging motorists would.
However, even with these measures, air pollution will still be over the legal limit of 40 micrograms of nitrogen dioxide per cubic metre in two locations.
The legal limit is 40, while the World Health Organisation’s recommended guideline is 10.
It is understood that leaders are confident the scheme will work because current government guidance is that any reading below 40.4 should be rounded down.
Transport for Greater Manchester has been approached for comment.