Western Daily Press (Saturday)
CAZ cameras switch on new city traffic era
BRISTOL’S Clean Air Zone cameras will be switched on at exactly midnight tomorrow night.
The new era of traffic management in the centre of Bristol will see drivers using non-compliant vehicles – generally older diesels and petrol-powered cars and vans and larger lorries, buses, coaches and trucks – required to pay a charge of either £9 or £100 for bigger vehicles if they are driven into the zone.
The Clean Air Zone – or CAZ – stretches from the Brunel Way dual carriageway over the Cumberland Basin at the western end of the Floating Harbour, all the way either side of the river to Temple Meads and Newfoundland Way at the bottom of the M32 into the city centre.
Bristol City Council has erected signs at all the entrances to the zone bearing a green facemask symbol, and cameras are in place at every road access, including the smallest of side roads in residential areas in St Paul’s, Hotwells, Ashton Gate, Southville, Bedminster and Totterdown.
Drivers in newer vehicles that comply with the emissions levels – which are estimated to be around three-quarters of all the motorists in Bristol – are not affected by the zone and will not have to pay. But tens of thousands of motorists will be.
When the city council switched on the cameras for three weeks during September as a test run, around 95,000 individual drivers were sent letters warning them that if they made the same journey after November 28, they would be liable for the CAZ charge.
When the zone goes live, drivers who cross into the zone in noncompliant, polluting vehicles will not necessarily be fined if they have not paid the charge.
The council is instigating a six-week “grace” period, which means that people who should be fined will be given the chance to simply pay the charge of £9 or £100, rather than the charge and the fine.
That grace period offer only applies to people who pay up within a week of receiving the notification, and only lasts until January 9.
Meanwhile it can be revealed that the cameras will be switched off on the busiest road in the zone if thousands of motorists are diverted off the M5 and have to drive into it.
Motorists will not be liable for the charge or be fined if they enter the zone in Bristol because they have been diverted away from an incident on the M5 on the Avonmouth Bridge.
Bristol City Council has confirmed that the cameras at the entrances to the zone on the southbound side of the A4 Portway and on the downhill side of Bridge Valley Road, as well as the cameras clocking motorists entering the zone from North Somerset on the A370 Brunel Way, will be switched off in the event that the M5 Avonmouth Bridge is closed.
The A3029 Brunel Way from Ashton Gate to Hotwells over the Cumberland Basin is already Bristol’s busiest A road, and its inclusion in the zone has been one of the more controversial elements of the project.
The Plimsoll Bridge and Avon Bridge over the Cumberland Basin and River Avon is the next major road bridge river crossing upstream from the M5 Avonmouth Bridge, and if the motorway is closed and that closure includes the Avonmouth Bridge between junction 18 for Avonmouth and 19 for Portishead, then traffic on the motorway is diverted into Bristol and usually over the Cumberland Basin.
When its inclusion was announced a couple of years ago, questions were asked about what would happen if the M5 was closed and the usual diversion put in place, which some councillors said happened several times a year.
In March 2021, opposition councillors raised the possibility that thousands of motorists would be fined through no fault of their own if the M5 traffic was diverted down the Portway and over the Cumberland Basin.
Now, it can be revealed that the next time this happens, the cameras will simply be switched off.
A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “A diversion off the M5 would be a special circumstance and we would not be charging or fining drivers who have to make a diversion into the Clean Air Zone.”
A diversion off the M5 would be a special circumstance and we would not be charging or fining drivers who have to make a diversion into the Clean Air Zone COUNCIL SPOKESPERSON