You’ll have seen the TV ads warning that, in two months, entering Dundee’s Low Emissions Zone (LEZ) with an unclean vehicle attracts a £60 fine.
The ads say it’s for health… for health… for health…
The council thinks if this is repeated often enough no one will question it.
I’m questioning it.
I read, in full, Professor Jill Belch’s study of Dundee: “Respiratory Admissions Linked to Air Pollution in a Medium Sized City of the UK”.
The report said “much more should be done to improve and enforce the established legal pollution limits in cities for the sake of our children’s health”.
It is puzzling. There’s no drilldown into where the kids in the study live. All it says is “postcodes DD1 to DD7”.
How, then, was it decided Dundee city centre is where a clean air zone is most needed? DD6 is north Fife. DD7 is Carnoustie.
There’s one school within the LEZ – Dundee High. But its pupils don’t live nearby. Very few kids live inside the inner ring.
Surely the city centre doesn’t have the worst air pollution.
That would be the heavy-use roads: Kingsway, Arbroath Road, Lochee Road, Greendykes, or the A90 where hundreds of HGVs a day labour past Fintry and Mill O’ Mains.
If the council’s first care was, as the TV ad implies, children’s health then busy roads in densely populated areas are where a clean air zone would be put.
But that’s too difficult.
Now this wouldn’t be a problem if no one suffered. But reduced footfall, as seen in Glasgow, means businesses pay the price for councillors buffing their green halos.
Anything that damages a Dundee business half a per cent, £50 a week, or costs one job, must be avoided.
It’s the lack of a Dundee-specific approach that galls me.
If the LEZ is imposed by Holyrood why didn’t councillors go back and say: we’ll take some elements, but create a system tailored to Dundee?
Dundonians – shopkeepers, shoppers, workers, pedestrians, cyclists, drivers – would have seen their council trying to do what’s best, in an energetic but balanced and savvy way, driven by knowledge of the city’s geography, economy and people.
Dundee low emission zone should be tailored to city
Councillors, did you suggest an all-vehicle corridor from the West Port circle to the Overgate Centre car park?
Did you consider making just the canyon streets Seagate and Whitehall Crescent/Road LEZs?
Did you point out this LEZ won’t help child health because it is where children are not?
Did you arrange more bus routes with extra buses?
Did you do one Dundee-specific thing to show an iota of creativity or native knowledge?
If you did, you kept it secret.
I sometimes watch your online council meetings. There are no sparky motivators, no dynamic innovators, no clever creators. It’s like a weird TV game show that could be titled Low Personality Zone (LPZ), with the objective being to appear as dull, grey and lethargic as possible.
LPZ created the LEZ that Holyrood and its Greens kingmakers dictated it create.
This is a tired, unimaginative council doing something just to give the impression it is doing something.
That’s the definition of gesture politics.
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