'Tens of thousands' of motorists could be dragged into paying clean air charges, claims councillor
An opposition councillor has warned “tens of thousands” of motorists could be forced to pay a clean air charge if the A4 Portway is left inside Bristol’s proposed Clean Air Zone.
Liberal Democrat councillor Tim Kent said M5 traffic had to use the Portway once or twice a year when diversions were put in place because of accidents and other motorway incidents.
The proposals could see polluting cars, taxis and LGVs pay £9 a day, while the fee for buses, coaches and HGVs would be £100.
But forcing polluting vehicles to pay to drive through the zone in the event of a highway diversion could present “legal problems”, Cllr Kent argued at a meeting of full council on Tuesday 16 March.
Cllr Kent was speaking in support of a suggestion from the Conservative group to ask the Government to revisit the inclusion of the Portway in the Clean Air Zone, but the motion fell by 37 votes to 20.
Bristol City Council submitted its final plans for a Clean Air Zone to the Government last month, and is waiting to hear whether it will have to make any changes before introducing the zone at the end of October.
Under the plans, polluting private cars, taxis and vans will be charged £9 a day to enter the zone, while polluting buses, coaches and lorries will be charged £100 a day.
Whenever the Avonmouth Bridge is closed, the nearest alternative crossing of the River Avon is Brunel Way.
Diverted traffic has to cross the Cumberland Basin at Plimsoll Bridge to get back onto the M5, requiring a trip along the Portway.
The inclusion of the Portway and Cumberland Basin in the Clean Air Zone has proved controversial, with residents and businesses in South Bristol saying it penalises them unfairly, and communities both north and south of the river worried about a flood of polluting vehicles, including lorries, on unsuitable roads in their neighbourhoods.
Cllr Kent said: “I think taking one more look at how we handle the Portway is reasonable.
“It is actually the overflow, the redirection route for when the motorway is closed, which we know it’s not that regular but can occur once or twice a year.
“Forcing, potentially, tens of thousands of people into a charging zone could present us with considerable legal problems.
“I can actually see the government potentially rejecting this element of the boundary potentially because of that reason.
“I also think that the danger of additional rat-running, additional pollution on the edges of the Clean Air Zone is a real one.”
Labour cabinet member for transport Cllr Kye Dudd said the council had no choice but to include the Portway in the zone.
The council is under a legal obligation to reduce levels of the traffic pollutant nitrogen dioxide to within legal limits in the shortest possible time.
Removing the Portway from the zone would mean it would take a year longer to achieve this, taking the compliance date from 2023 to 2024.
Cllr Dudd said: “We’re really stuck here in terms of what we can do around this one.”
City mayor Marvin Rees said: “Taking the Portway out, it’s not just about what it does to traffic flow on the Portway, it’s the role the Portway plays in encouraging behaviour change and the change of vehicles within the overall city fleet, both private vehicles and commercial vehicles, and that’s part of what the modelling takes into account.”
The Tory motion asked the Government to review the council’s evidence – technical modelling conducted by experts – to see whether the western boundary of the zone could be revised without affecting the compliance date.
The council has estimated that two-thirds of vehicles will not attract a clean air charge because they do not breach emission standards.
It is seeking government funding to make it cheaper for people to switch to cleaner models, and planning a raft of mitigations to ease the pressure on individuals and businesses.
Credit: Amanda Cameron, Local Democracy Reporter
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