Report from Glasgow - a low emission zone
June 2
Whenever I go to Glasgow to visit my uncle, David Kemp, I generally have the choice of driving or taking the train - but if I had driven today I would have incurred a £60 fine - the elderly car I share with my grown-up seems unlikely to meet the standard for the city’s low emission zone that started yesterday.
In fact, I don’t usually drive - one reason is that I prefer the train, because I can work on it. And parking in the city centre costs more than the train fare by itself - if you can find a space. Two, I potentially avoid a tedious game of car hide and seek because someone (maybe me) forgot exactly where they left Silvia (she is a silver Vauxhall Corsa and really good at blending in).
Third, the LEZ has made me more conscious of the emissions that I might produce on a long drive - and on that note, a big thank you to all the paid subscribers to this column. Each subscription brings me one step closer to changing Silvia for a car that complies with European Standard 4 - in time for Edinburgh’s LEZ next year.
It was a good thing I knew about the LEZ - which unlike some others in the UK outright bans rather than charging the most polluting vehicles to enter the city centre. But on the other hand, it would be hard to not know about it - the Scottish media has been broadcasting apocalyptic warnings from angry motorists for days. Having heard all these dire predictions, when I alighted at Queen Street station, I was expecting the silence of the cars - empty streets and tumbleweed blowing across George Square. In fact, I have to say, I couldn’t see much difference. Ingram St carpark was as full as ever, and there weren’t many spaces on the side streets either.
I collected David to take him to the Mary Quant exhibition at Kelvingrove Gallery. How easy would it be to get an Uber, I wondered, as I had read that many minicabs would be barred from the city. However, the app said a few minutes and it turned out to be quicker even than that. You can’t keep Uber divers waiting as it is a fixed fee, so I ended up flying down the stairs two at a time, carrying the bin bags I was taking out.
Our driver Shamim said that he has noticed very little effect from the new zone. Business is about the same as usual. “The council has been writing to private hire driver for months, telling them which cars don’t qualify.” Most were OK. Some drivers have had to upgrade, but they have had time to prepare.
The Quant exhibition was a lively reminder of a world where the young held sway - literally. The boomer generation was starting its long hegemony - taking the keys of the castle from parents exhausted by World War Two, they had the freedom to reinvent everything from the corset to the built enviromment - both for good and for ill. A video shows Quant explaining that she was “trying to live in the future”.
Glasgow is full of mementoes of that time - like the urban motorways that cut through it. We took another Uber back from the gallery and our driver Joe waxed lyrical about the exceptional tram system Glasgow once had, closed in 1962. It was one of the largest in Europe with 1000 trams covering 100 route miles - emission-free affordable public transport that went to every area. Many Glasgow tram drivers were women - but they weren’t allowed to transfer to the buses due to the greater physical strength thought to be required to steer them. The age of the car was the future back then.
Now the internal combustion engine has had its day. China’s new lighter and cheaper BYD electric cars are flying off the shelves - they have 4 million public charging posts now - one for every 350 citizens.
We stopped for an ice cream at a cafe opposite Kelvingrove - that is actually outside the zone, which affects only the centre. Our waiter Murray, like many Glaswegians, doesn’t drive - car ownership is about the lowest in a UK city. Murray didn’t think the plan would affect him and said Glasgow “might as well give it a go”. Others though, were concerned about footfall in the city centre. There are definitely challenges for the carless in getting around - Glasgow is a sprawling city and the bus network is not as good as Edinburgh’s publicly owned one.
Walking back to Queen Street in the afternoon sunshine, I stopped to chat to some waiters moving furniture outside one of the big eateries looking onto George Square. The couple of them who drove said that their wee cars were OK and that they weren’t concerned about damage from the LEZ.
The black cab rank outside the station was moving fast so I could only talk to the drivers for a minute or two. Joe (no relation to the Uber driver as far as I know) said the LEZ was good news for children’s lungs and for people with respiratory illness but bad news for others, such as black cab drivers who have a year to expensively upgrade their cabs. Having weighed this in the balance, he felt the children’s lungs were more important. He’s right - I guess poor old Silvia Corsa’s days are numbered.
Footnote - on further investigation, I discovered that Silvia despite being 12 years old can still be driven in Glasgow’s LEZ which surprised me.
Excellently positive article
Very interesting. I support this LEZ initiative although I understand that it will be a hard transition for people who depend on older non-compliant vehicles. Sorry to hear that Glasgow let the tram system fail - a familiar story here in the US where the toxic internal combustion automobile prevailed over the vast public transportation systems of the early 20th century many years ago.