City air quality is now WORSE under council’s anti-driver LEZ
POLLUTION in the SNP’s £50 million ‘green’ Low Emission Zone in Glasgow has INCREASED compared with last year, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The LEZ was introduced ten months ago and has led to thousands of otherwise legal cars being banned from the city centre.
It was aimed at cutting emissions, with nitrogen dioxide (NO2) cited as the key pollutant to be reduced.
However, statistics obtained by this newspaper show the NO2 level at the key monitoring station in the city centre increased for the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year before the LEZ was introduced.
The average level across January, February and March at the station in the city’s Hope Street was 44.2 microgrammes per cubic metre, up from 42.5 for the same period in 2023.
Shockingly, another monitoring station in a school playground in Anderston, yards outside the LEZ, shows NO2 up by 35 per cent – prompting concerns, cited before in Glasgow City Council’s own LEZ reports, that traffic is simply being ‘displaced’ around the ban zone.
This echoes concerns voiced last week by furious locals in Sighthill Circus, again on the edge of the LEZ, whose streets are now being used to park vehicles banned from the city centre.
Meanwhile, at a third monitoring station, at Townhead within the zone, levels of ozone, which can trigger asthma, have also increased.
With further LEZs planned in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh this year, calls are growing for a reassessment of the schemes.
The LEZ has so far cost approximately £54 million with the sum set to rocket as the new zones are introduced. One expert, who did not wish to be named, said city NO2 pollution was mainly due to buses, not cars, calling into question the rationale behind the policy.
AA spokesman Luke Bosdet said: ‘A big question is how much the air quality across the LEZ and wider city could have been improved by spending the millions of pounds these have cost on better park and ride, and park and cycle, facilities on the outskirts.
‘The other cities in Scotland looking to introduce LEZs
‘Traffic is simply being displaced’
‘Clearly not meeting its main objective’
need to step back and consider what has happened in Glasgow.’
Scottish Tory transport spokesman Graham Simpson said: ‘Nearly a year on from the rollout of the SNPGreens’ shambolic LEZ, it is clear it is not even meeting its main objective to improve air quality.’
A City Council spokesman said: ‘Levels of air pollution, in particular nitrogen dioxide and particulates, are influenced by a number of factors, including weather patterns.
‘The LEZ’s initial impact will be assessed as part of a statutory annual progress report later this year, with detailed analysis from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.’