Dundee City Council is fully committed to improving air quality in the city for everyone who lives, works and visits through the introduction of a Low Emission Zone (LEZ).
The Scottish Government has pledged to introduce LEZs into Scotland’s four biggest cities – Dundee, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen by 2020 and Dundee City Council needs your help to decide the area that its LEZ will cover and what types of vehicle will be excluded.
An LEZ in Dundee will contribute to the broader city objectives and help create a healthy, vibrant and attractive city by protecting public health through improving air quality.
It will develop an environment that helps to promote more active and sustainable travel choices, contributes to the city’s ongoing transformational change and helps to promote Dundee as an inclusive and desirable place to live, invest, visit and learn.
As part of the exercise, people who take part in the consultation will also have access to scientific and other data explaining the options, as well as why other options haven’t been included.
Air quality is good in most places in the city, but there are parts where pollution levels are higher than the legal standards. Road traffic is the biggest single cause of Dundee’s air pollution.
Technical work has considered a wide range of options for the area the LEZ should cover. It concluded that the best way of balancing all of the objectives would be for the LEZ to be the area inside the inner ring road.
The same work has also looked at which types of vehicle should be excluded from entering the LEZs under the new regulations.
It suggests two options:
- Non-compliant buses – this may be relatively easy to implement, but will mean that more locations continue to have pollution levels above standards.
- All non-compliant vehicles, including lorries, vans and private cars – this will impact on the journey choices of more people, but will generate the greatest reduction in pollution.
In the second option, most diesel vehicles registered before 2015 would be unable to be driven in the LEZ.
Whatever option is chosen at the end of the consultation process, it is important that it balances air quality with ensuring that the city’s commerce and industry is not brought to a standstill.
As well as the introduction of an LEZ, Dundee City Council is actively encouraging other ways of improving air quality by investing in active travel options like electric bikes and improving cycling and walking infrastructure.
To find out more about the proposals for Dundee’s LEZ, and to take part in the consultation, visit the Dundee City Council website.
