Glasgow City Council’s Environment and Sustainability Committee has released details of its proposals for Scotland’s first Low Emission Zone (LEZ), planned to start on 31 December.
The requirement will be Euro 6, with a five-year lead-in period.
The zone will cover the city’s central core, bounded by the Clyde to the south, M8 to the west and north, and High Street to the east.
A recent modification includes a single corridor from the M8 to enable buses that do not serve the city centre to reach Buchanan Bus Station.
The first phase of the scheme, addressing buses only, will be enforced by a Traffic Regulation Condition overseen by the Traffic Commissioner.
The second phase will cover all vehicles.
The scheme is still at the consultation stage.
The LEZ proposals recognize that around 1,000 buses using the city centre are non-compliant. Currently 10-12% of buses in the city centre are Euro 6.
As a result, phased introduction will take place with 20% of buses required to be compliant by 31 December 2018, then 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% each December afterwards until 2022.
In addition, work to speed up journeys – reducing congestion and therefore emissions from slow moving or stationary buses – will take place using a range of bus priority measures.
The plans also envisage using some of the £10.8m the Scottish Government has allocated across the country for LEZ delivery, for retrofit programmes. It has also provided £1.6m in 2017/18 to deliver the Bus Emission Abatement Retrofit Programme Phase 1.
It is expected that operators will meet the LEZ requirements by a mix of new vehicle purchases and retrofit.
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