Sheffield Congestion Charge From Feb 27th 2023

[sheffbag]

30 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

The experience elsewhere is that the CAZ’s drive up compliance.

 

Vehicle owners tend to update their fleets ( and there are grants available to help with costs) so the percentage of compliant vehicles increases over time.

 

Some categories of vehicle ( cabs for example) were given more time to achieve compliance.

 

You would hope that SCC might publish progress reports, perhaps annually.

 

SCC arent publishing reports until 2024 after the first year results are analysed. however as previously repeated many times. the results for 2022 show that the CAZ is already well below 40 overall

 

However, the purpose of the CAZ is not to drive up compliance of vehicles. It is to reduce the emissions to below the legal limit of 40. How it does that (move vehicles to different locations, encourage people to upgrade cars) is immaterial.  SCC dont care about that, it just has to reduce the levels,.......... which are already legal to even more legal.

 

And for those who commented over the FOI i sent in, i took your advice and just waiting for my response to come back as to whether SCC ever asked the question formally (they didnt, we know that) or informally on the govt.

 

 

[Hayley1]

10 hours ago, sheffbag said:

SCC arent publishing reports until 2024 after the first year results are analysed. however as previously repeated many times. the results for 2022 show that the CAZ is already well below 40 overall

 

However, the purpose of the CAZ is not to drive up compliance of vehicles. It is to reduce the emissions to below the legal limit of 40. How it does that (move vehicles to different locations, encourage people to upgrade cars) is immaterial.  SCC dont care about that, it just has to reduce the levels,.......... which are already legal to even more legal.

 

And for those who commented over the FOI i sent in, i took your advice and just waiting for my response to come back as to whether SCC ever asked the question formally (they didnt, we know that) or informally on the govt.

 

 

Thank you everyone who responded. I had spent about an hour trying to find out when we'll know if it's working but there were too many slightly off-topic posts to distract me 😉

[ads36]

23 hours ago, sheffbag said:

as previously repeated many times. the results for 2022 show that the CAZ is already well below 40 overall

you may or may not be interested to compare the legal limit, with the values suggested by the World Health Organisation.

[RollingJ]

7 minutes ago, ads36 said:

you may or may not be interested to compare the legal limit, with the values suggested by the World Health Organisation.

Note the emphasised word above.

[ads36]

well. quite.

 

doctors, who've studied the effects of air pollution, have suggested values for particulates /NO / etc.

 

and politicians have responded with legal limits 4 times higher.

 

i know where i put my trust.  i'm *glad* that we are still trying to reduce air pollution.

Edited June 29, 2023 by ads36

[sheffbag]

44 minutes ago, ads36 said:

you may or may not be interested to compare the legal limit, with the values suggested by the World Health Organisation.

I am fully aware of the suggested values contained in the WHO publication in 2022. I am also aware of the interim targets set out in the document even though these interims dont seem to be defined anywhere

 

But, we are talking about the legal limit, which was set at the time with advice from WHO and that is the limit that the campaigners took to court and forced upon the UK govt. That was 40 for NoX and that is what SCC's CAZ zone is currently below overall.

 

So no, the politicians didn't set it 4 times higher. It was set at 40 under the European directive in 2008. WHO have since revised their opinion and published their report in 2022..

 

If you wish to take WHO reports as your guidance then i presume you follow all their suggestions with regard to alcohol, food intake, exercise, sustainability, etc 

Edited June 29, 2023 by sheffbag

[ads36]

4 minutes ago, sheffbag said:

If you wish to take WHO reports as your guidance then i presume you follow all their suggestions with regard to alcohol, food intake, exercise, sustainability,

by and large, yes.

 

but those are personal choices: if i choose to eat too many crisps*, it has zero effects on the health of anyone else.

 

compare and contrast with the effects of choosing to drive a polluting vehicle.

 

(*i love crisps)

Edited June 29, 2023 by ads36

[sheffbag]

13 minutes ago, ads36 said:

by and large, yes.

 

but those are personal choices: if i choose to eat too many crisps*, it has zero effects on the health of anyone else.

 

compare and contrast with the effects of choosing to drive a polluting vehicle.

 

(*i love crisps)

If you choose to eat too many crisps then you are encouraging the production of additional crisp manufacture which in turn produces, more emissions from the farms involved in producing the potatoes to make your crisps, more emissions from the factories producing the crisps, more emissions from the people making the packaging for the crisps, more emissions in transporting the crisps to the shops,  more emissions from travelling to buy the crisps.

 

Put it this way, if the equivalent of everyone in the country had an extra bag of crisps once a month thats 65M packets a month or 780M packets a year. thats a lot of production and transporting

 

So yes, everything you do affects emission levels, even eating crisps.

 

If you decide to drive an electric car do you know the actual emissions involved in producing the car from items like the battery manufacturing, the car production, the infrastructure needed to support electric cars? The end result of the physical car emissions may be low, but the journey to get there isnt.

 

I'll give you another scenario. Heathrow airport produces more emissions than the whole of Sheffields car and transport infrastructure so do we close the airports instead as the planes release emissions all over the country?

 

(*i love crisps too, especially seabrooks salt and vinegar)

Edited June 29, 2023 by sheffbag

[RollingJ]

On 27/06/2023 at 18:13, Planner1 said:

I don’t think you can draw parallels.

 

The advent of CAZ’s was a response by the government to being compelled by the courts to act on poor air quality ( specifically nitrogen oxides) in certain cities. This was the result of court action by environmental activists.

Sheffield, like most other large cities was mandated by the government to introduce a CAZ. The only choice that the cities got was to pick which type of CAZ they implemented within a limited range which the government specified. That choice had to be backed up by a very detailed business case justifying how it would deliver the required results ( as the government were giving cities the money to implement the CAZ’s).

 

Different cities introduced different types of CAZ. Manchester asked for theirs to be deferred ( after installing the camera system).
 

They all use a common back office system for processing the charges. They all use similar ANPR camera setups.

 

The talking point on Sheffield’s seems to be whether or not the council asked for ours to be cancelled or deferred as it appears that air quality is now largely compliant. Answers given by the responsible committee chair and officers seem contradictory. 
 

The Amey contract was a commercial arrangement entered into voluntarily by the council. It involved private sector investment and government money as well as council money. It took a long time and a lot of effort to procure it. 
 

Both of these were progressed by different teams at the council. One was a legal obligation, the other was a commercial arrangement. I’m therefore not at all sure what you are trying to infer by drawing parallels between them.

 

 

And both were presumably signed off by high-level personnel - i.e. senior executives, or council leaders.

On 28/06/2023 at 10:16, Planner1 said:

 

I don’t know much about the tree felling issues. Haven’t read the report.

Maybe you should , The covering message from the reports author alone should worry the council.

[hackey lad]

4 minutes ago, RollingJ said:

And both were presumably signed off by high-level personnel - i.e. senior executives, or council leaders.

Maybe you should , The covering message from the reports author alone should worry the council.

Stop it mate , one mention of the trees and he runs for the hills .