Sheffield Congestion Charge From Feb 27th 2023

[RollingJ]

3 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

Sheaf St is the inner ring road, it’s extremely busy and it is within the CAZ so any monitoring site on it could hardly be deemed irrelevant.

 

The government and the courts aren’t interested in exactly where the pollutants come from.  The levels are illegal and they want them brought down to within legal limits in the shortest possible time. Restrictions on road traffic is the chosen method of doing that.

 

We all might have a view on where the pollutants might be coming from, but there is no way of determining that ( that I’m aware of).

 

If in the fullness of time, that turns out to be the only non compliant site, you might think that the government might listen to an argument for that location’s data not to be considered. However, it’s the courts that ultimately decide on whether the government has done enough to secure air quality within legal limits.

Boldened/underlined section  - typical response from 'officialdom' - 'we know best, so any questioning of us is unjustified'.

 

Boldened bit - So logic is not to be applied - or even considered?

[Planner1]

10 minutes ago, RollingJ said:

Boldened/underlined section  - typical response from 'officialdom' - 'we know best, so any questioning of us is unjustified'.

 

Boldened bit - So logic is not to be applied - or even considered?

The monitoring at that location shows an exceedance of a legal limit.

 

The law doesn’t specify where the pollutant has to come from, only the maximum level.

 

The government can get fined (massively) for not acting to reduce the levels to within those limits. The fines can be passported direct to the council.

 

Those are the facts. Make of them what you will. Complain to the government if you don’t like it. Speculating and moaning on here will change nothing.

[RollingJ]

2 minutes ago, Planner1 said:

The monitoring at that location shows an exceedance of a legal limit.

 

The law doesn’t specify where the pollutant has to come from, only the maximum level.

 

The government can get fined (massively) for not acting to reduce the levels to within those limits. The fines can be passported direct to the council.

 

Those are the facts. Make of them what you will. Complain to the government if you don’t like it. Speculating and moaning on here will change nothing.

I accept that the monitoring at that point shows that the legal limit is being exceeded, but if we don't know where it is  coming from, how do we know the measures in place will reduce it?

 

Complaining to the 'the government' will have no effect - officialdom 'always knows best' .

[mike1961]

2 hours ago, Planner1 said:

CAZ charges apply to roads and road vehicles, so as trains aren’t road vehicles and don’t use roads, the charges can’t apply to them.

 

Pretty simple really.

Yeah but they are bringing pollutants into the city ,just like the diesel generators used for the now defunct containers on Fargate. The whole thing is a joke ,id be laughing but sadly the joke ain't funny.

[Victor Meldrew]

2 hours ago, mike1961 said:

Yeah but they are bringing pollutants into the city ,just like the diesel generators used for the now defunct containers on Fargate. 

And just like the police van often parked on Barker's Pool blatantly idling it's engine. But that's ok I suppose.

[Meltman]

1 minute ago, Victor Meldrew said:

And just like the police van often parked on Barker's Pool blatantly idling it's engine. But that's ok I suppose.

You will find certain vehicles (and therfore drivers) are exempt, such as public service vehicles, emergency vehicles, generators and their pollution dose not count!

[HeHasRisen]

10 minutes ago, Victor Meldrew said:

And just like the police van often parked on Barker's Pool blatantly idling it's engine. But that's ok I suppose.

If its Euro6 compliant then yes, anyone can go and do it without paying. I suspect it will be.

Edited February 8, 2023 by HeHasRisen
Typo!

[Victor Meldrew]

Is that what I have to do then - raise a "Euro6 complaint" ? 😂

Edited February 8, 2023 by Victor Meldrew

[HeHasRisen]

Just now, Victor Meldrew said:

Is that what I have to do then - raise a Euro6 complaint ? 😂

Thank you for pointing out the typo 😘

[sheffbag]

6 hours ago, Planner1 said:

The monitoring at that location shows an exceedance of a legal limit.

 

The law doesn’t specify where the pollutant has to come from, only the maximum level.

 

The government can get fined (massively) for not acting to reduce the levels to within those limits. The fines can be passported direct to the council.

 

Those are the facts. Make of them what you will. Complain to the government if you don’t like it. Speculating and moaning on here will change nothing.

The monitoring at that location will never go below 40. The 2020 figures bear that out. You are just trying to be deliberately obnoxious with your continual claim that the train station has nothing to do with the tube directly outside it despite sheffields clean air strategy saying it, despite the other tubes next to the station (which are not in the caz) being overly high in comparison to tubes less than 100 metres away

 

you know it’s the station making the difference but just trying to tow the council line.

yes the sheaf st tube is over the limit, correct

yes the sheaf st tube was still over the limit when there is no traffic on the road in 2020, correct

yes the areas everywhere else in Sheffield that are more than 100 metres away from the station are clean in 2020 bar the interchanges

 

so……..you denying that the train station is causing the abnormal figures for sheaf st tube even though it was still over the level when there was virtually no cars, vans, buses in the road?

 

I-note your last paragraph. That’s exactly what SCC should have done when outlining the caz zone and enforced the fact that it is getting the risk of penalty for something it has no control over. But it didn’t, it instead chose to get its belly tickled and raise finances through the motorist, not forgetting that 20% of your £10 fine goes straight to the company operating the service and Sheffield council only has to show that ‘any monies has to be used on projects that directly, or indirectly, help it achieve its air quality aims’ so it could be used on anything as long as someone writing the business case can slip in a clause about traffic or congestion.

 

Leeds has a station over the 40 limit, it’s the one near the train station. It has scrapped the caz . Sheffield should have argued that sheaf st data cannot be taken as it cannot be affected by doing anything with the road network. The figures from 2020 bear that out.

6 hours ago, Planner1 said:

This discussion has been done to death already.

 

The only quantifiable thing is what the air quality monitoring tells us about nitrogen oxide levels at that location.

 

Anything else is a guess. It doesn’t matter where the nitrogen oxide comes from. It’s the amount of it that counts. 

The nitrogen oxide is coming from an area the council has no control over.

Edited February 8, 2023 by sheffbag