Clean Air Zone in Marple and Marple Bridge

[Dave]

Their owners seem to think the size of car reflects status, but to me it reflects something else.

And what’s that, Cyberman?

[Cyberman]

I look at pictures of my parents car from the 1980s.  It's tiny in comparison.  But we didn't need child seats.  And the Vauxhall Chevette we had wouldn't survive as well in a crash as my modern MPV...

A Vauxhall Chevette..  Luxury. We made do with a HA Viva. I take your point about MPVs and crossovers - they can give the space necessary nowadays for a family. But the new cars in our road are proper 4x4's - we have a Range Rover, a Merc and a Volvo. Their size makes the parking problem on our road even worse, because they don't fit on the narrow drives. Their poor aerodynamics, chunky tyres and 4WD make them thirsty.  And one at least is at the moment mostly used for the school run, where it probably sits in a queue for most of the time. Their owners seem to think the size of car reflects status, but to me it reflects something else. Perhaps the increasing cost of fuel will make folks change their buying habits and choose less polluting, less resource-hungry vehicles.

[Dave]

There seems to have been a new development in this matter. See https://cleanairgm.com/news/statement-from-eamonn-boylan-chief-executive-of-greater-manchester-combined/

So the GMC is seeking to ‘pause’ the introduction of clean air zones, and it is hoped that more funding might be extracted from the government (good luck with that 🙄).  No doubt there is also an element of delay because of the backlash to the GM scheme, which unlike those in other cities, is not confined to the city centre where there is a real problem with high levels of Nitrous Oxide, but is to be imposed throughout the entire GM area, including places like Marple where there is no serious issue with excess NO2.  Let’s hope the ‘pause’ leads to a bit of common sense.

[jimblob]

On my road, nearly every new vehicle that's appeared is a bl**dy huge SUV, mostly used for conveying a small child to and from school.

something of a sweeping generalisation perhaps???

[andrewbowden]

One of my (numerous) complaints against this government is that recent changes in vehicle tax have greatly reduced the incentive to buy small, economical (and therefore low emission) vehicles. Unless you buy electric your yearly tax is much the same whatever the size of the vehicle. On my road, nearly every new vehicle that's appeared is a bl**dy huge SUV, mostly used for conveying a small child to and from school.

Many of the things that look like SUVs will be MPVs.  SUVs have 4 wheel drive, whilst an MPV doesn't.  Stylistically MPVs look quite similar to SUVs.  And as an owner of an MPV, I got one for multiple reasons including that MPVs have good amounts of space inside, which is useful for holidays and travel.  Or just putting a buggy in.  They also make life much easier when it comes to child car seats which - to be blunt - are massive.  My parents have a standard estate car and have car seats of their own for the children, and had to give up on one of them because it was too big for the back of their car.  It was unusable.  In our MPV we can actually fit three child seats on the back row - an impossibility with most smaller cars.

Now my children are getting older and one of them doesn't need a car seat any more.  By the time we replace our car, we may not need the size of an MPV day to day.  But I understand why people have them because I have one. 

I look at pictures of my parents car from the 1980s.  It's tiny in comparison.  But we didn't need child seats.  And the Vauxhall Chevette we had wouldn't survive as well in a crash as my modern MPV...

(P.S. my children walk to school so you don't need to worry there.)

[Cyberman]

And all the while, NoX emissions from vehicles is falling (despite there being more of them),

A very interesting point - but to counteract this vehicles are getting bigger:
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-suv-sales-set-another-record-in-2021-setting-back-efforts-to-reduce-emissions
This refers to CO2 emissions, but NoX will follow the trend.

One of my (numerous) complaints against this government is that recent changes in vehicle tax have greatly reduced the incentive to buy small, economical (and therefore low emission) vehicles. Unless you buy electric your yearly tax is much the same whatever the size of the vehicle. On my road, nearly every new vehicle that's appeared is a bl**dy huge SUV, mostly used for conveying a small child to and from school.

[jimblob]

And all the while, NoX emissions from vehicles is falling (despite there being more of them),
Euro standard   Date   NOx
Euro 3           January 2001           0.5
Euro 4           January 2006           0.25
Euro 5a           September 2011   0.18
Euro 6           September 2015   0.08
Since 2015, a Euro6 diesel produces less than a 5th of the NoX as a Euro3 and around half of that of  Euro5A from 2011. The number of vehicles hasn't increased by the same levels and therefore over time, the situation will ammeliorate. It's almost that the clock is ticking and governement have to get this new taxation introduced before the older vehicles all go to the scrapper and the case for ULEZ is gone. Rest assured, even if we were to all move to electric vehicles, you'll be taxed on those at some point!
You can chose a statistic to back any argument it seems.

[Howard]

I'm with you @Belly

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the concept of "the polluter pays" is the right one. The air quality of our towns and cities is a matter for everyone. There really should be a calculation for the carbon footprint and pollution index of a vehicle which includes manufacturing, operation and recycling as well as per mile pricing depending on occupancy and weight. That's what the vehicle operator would pay for.

Unfortunately we're a long way off that and it's likely to be too intrusive for the public to buy into that. Until we get there, blunt instruments like the ULEZ are the only current answer.

[GM]

How can I look foolish, when I've ignored the last two years data on purpose that COVID has reduced vehicle usage!.

[Belly]

What on earth are you going on about?

As I've pointed out, 2019 / 2020 AQ and traffic information is unrepresentative of everything that went before the Pandemic. Because traffic levels during the last 2 years were artificially low due to Covid. Thats why all of the AQ monitoring stations are showing lower levels for 2020. Thats just a matter of fact. Argue with it if you want, but you just look foolish.

AQ station 7 is located right in the middle of Hazel Grove town centre on the N-S A6 corridor - why would that be affected by construction of an E-W link road 2 or 3 miles away? 

[GM]

As per jimblob, there are only two that failed the 40 limit across the whole of greater Manchester!.

So by your brilliant deduction, you should punish the whole population just because you can't wait to get more concrete evidence to justify any scheme!.

By the same token you could blame the high readings at site 7 as a direct result of the construction of the bypass, having sat in the residual mess of roadworks in poynton getting to the bypass that wouldn't be a long stretch of the imagination.

[Belly]

Well the Marple sensor, ie the one we as a website I would hope, would be interested in shows little change pre covid.

It’s around the 29 mark, which the limit they set was 40.
Having looked at a number of the results and ignoring the covid years, they all show a marked reduction without Andy’s let’s wring the motorists yet again scheme!.

You can’t blame covid for everything and I include the council using such excuses for saying leisure centres, library’s have seen a reduction in usage. It’s a bit like proclaiming we’ve not been buying travel money as much either!.

Of course we can blame covid for a huge reduction in car journeys in 2019 and 2020 - its an absolute proven fact. Indeed, so much so that in my job I'm not allowed to freely use traffic data collected during these key times, due to concerns with it being unrepresentative of what precdeded the pandemic. Its a nonsense to suggest otherwise.

So what if Marple is below the threshold for potentially harmful air quality - lucky us, we thankfully live in a relatively quiet suburb / town, on the edge of the green lung of the Peak District. But we don't just drive our cars around Marple, we do like to travel further afield, be it to work, shop, leisure, etc. So unlucky Hazel Grove, Bredbury, Offerton etc and large parts of the rest of GM, where our cars often pass through, and where AQ has been an issue for years, until the pandemic cut vehicle movements (for the moment).

There are actually very few monitoring stations in Stockport that provide long term data, but if we look at two that are on routes that are likley to accept significant quantities of Marple derived traffic (e.g. A6 and A626), this shows that: on the A6 through Hazel Grove, one of the AQ stations (site 7) has shown values above theshold all through the 2010's up until 2019 / 2020, whereupon it dropped by 40+% - can anyone think why? At the station at the end of A626 Offerton Road / Marple Rd just before the Stockport inner relief road, there appears to be only data for the last 2 years. This shows AQ levels at close to threshold in 2019 which would have been impacted by the pandemic and a drop in 2020. Who know's where levels were before 2019 and covid, but it would be a good guess that they were higher, based on data from other sites.

I'm not saying the current ULEZ scheme is the answer, but vehicle emission related AQ issues are definitely real in GM and it doesn't help the debate to pretend that recorded values in the last 2 years are in any way representative of typical traffic levels and that there isn't a problem, just because Marple is 'ok'.

[GM]

Well the Marple sensor, ie the one we as a website I would hope, would be interested in shows little change pre covid.

It’s around the 29 mark, which the limit they set was 40.
Having looked at a number of the results and ignoring the covid years, they all show a marked reduction without Andy’s let’s wring the motorists yet again scheme!.

You can’t blame covid for everything and I include the council using such excuses for saying leisure centres, library’s have seen a reduction in usage. It’s a bit like proclaiming we’ve not been buying travel money as much either!.

[Belly]

looking at https://cleanairgm.com/data-hub/diffusion-tubes and pulling some data for analysis, out of a network of 400 passive diffusion tubes, only TWO, yes two, identify as not meeting targets, Tameside 55 and Wigan 180. there is no problem to fix!

That's because, thanks to Covid, traffic levels at these locations have all dropped by a substantial level - look at all of the monitoring graphs for a wide range of locations all over GM. This means that a huge amount of locations that were above target levels are currently below - but we all know that this is temporary.

So what do we learn from that. Fewer vehicle trips = better air quality. Can't think why they are looking to implement a clean air initiative that focuses on vehicle trips? 

[jimblob]

Well having looked at the clean air map, i don't think you can even reliably make such a wide sweeping decision on effectively 21 data locations based primarily at junctions across a 493 square mile area.

Personally speaking the current VED system is perfectly adequate, if you wanted to tweek the pricing structure that would be my starting point.

And at the same time not excluding making Tesla owners actually pay, just because they're pollution is remote does not let them off Scott free.

looking at https://cleanairgm.com/data-hub/diffusion-tubes and pulling some data for analysis, out of a network of 400 passive diffusion tubes, only TWO, yes two, identify as not meeting targets, Tameside 55 and Wigan 180. there is no problem to fix!
areas that show higher levels are generally as a result of queueing traffic... so let's build more cycle lanes or install speed humps and restrict the traffic even further so we can up the pollution levels and justify charging folks for our poor air quality!
let's try and scare the bejeesus out of folk so they don't mind paying...