Beware Clean Air Zones Coming

duggie

Active Member
Region
United Kingdom
In the UK they are just beginning to roll out what are called Clean Air Zones (CAZ). The idea is that vehicles with older engines can only enter the CAZ if they pay. Naturally these CAZs are usually large urban areas and within the ring road. They are just popping up. You'll be driving along and there will be a sign saying CAZ in 1.5 miles.

This is very bad for me, and others. It's going to be rolled out all over, even smaller places, so that it will be almost impossible to drive about without incurring these payments, or being forced to go electric.

But it gets worse. We were heading for a city which has yet to introduce a CAZ, but we needed to skirt a city on the way there which had a CAZ. I had my route and knew I would be ok, BUT what they had done was to extend the CAZ quite a few miles out of the city and apply it to a road which led towards the CAZ city, just a bit of duel carriage way, BUT having pulled over to see the map, I could see that there was no other way (other than a very long detour), so they were using the CAZ as a toll.

So this type of thing is going to make it even more difficult to drive about.

I bought a new vehicle 6 years ago and opted for the euro 5 engine, I could have had the euro 6 engine, which are exempt fro CAZ charges. If |I'd known CAZ were coming I'd have bought the euro 6 engine.

I think folks would be well advised to keep this in mind when making vehicle decisions.
 
I'm driving my last ICE-engined car. By the time its warranty is up in about 4 years the BEV infrastructure and marketplace should be very well-established.
 
I'm driving my last ICE-engined car. By the time its warranty is up in about 4 years the BEV infrastructure and marketplace should be very well-established.
Well, I don't know for you, but my instinct says stay with ICE for as long as you can. Life is difficult enough, and transport is too necessary. We all know there is going to be many problems for at least the next 20 years.
 
@duggie, I like the idea very much. My town is moving to be carbon neutral and green, making it nicer for humans. But 40 years ago a car culture movie was filmed here called American Graffiti. Now everyone with old stinky cars wants to come here. Harley's too. With straight pipes. We could do a three block area and that would stop the problem while making it nice for people to walk and bike downtown. You can't eat and have a normal conversation with two dozen Harleys and stinky cars that do not idle well and require constant revving.
 
I can see that would be annoying. It is just that we have to consider the poor, whom this will impact hardest, on top of already too difficult limits. It's alright changing for the better, but it comes at a cost.
 
I enjoy your perspective. Thank you. In urban areas here 50% of real estate is dedicated to cars. Without so many of them resources can be reallocated for better purposes. For example low cost housing for workers in a town so they do not need to commute to frontline service jobs that well-off people want, such as restaurant staff. Free parking is not free real estate we just pay for it in other ways with higher prices. That is paid even by those who do not have cars at a food market. People walking will stop into a small urban shop or café, generating local jobs and sales taxes, whilst the cars are passing through. We want our town to be a destination not just a pass-thru. Have you seen what an America Shopping mall looks like? It is mostly parking. Bikes are the very best EV.
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Pedal........yes, low cost housing for the workers, BUT it is just words in the end. This is what is happening now, it has gone too far and is breaking up. In the UK people no longer strike, they quit....those who can, those in their 50s; those who can't have to endure massively, too much, too much, beyond human ability, with the best will in the world. But that is the temperature. The pips are now really squeaking. No low hanging fruit. No high hanging fruit. There is now no where to turn. Things here are buckling. They are targeting help like mad to shore it up. Something massive will have to change. It's the end of the line. It's like a ponzi scheme at its end. Folks just don't have it. I talk with lots of customers, women, i listen to them, and they all detect, primevally, something massive to happen. A course was obviously taken decades ago which is now beginning to show, in deed, it's gross long-term failure. People just do not have the money. If they fall, and they are, then all the rest above will follow.

The social engineering is too much, too obvious, all the media involved are in it. Harry & Megan, etc, all distraction which is obvious. People can see the distraction game and are turning off. The river is changing course. It's life and death to those poor. They are getting serious, and clever once they shrug off the blah-blah. They waking up.

The road which used the CAZ to 'block it' is going to change everything. How will the people react? I think there will be so many of them in number which will exponentially grow that there will be a revolution. The pitch forks are coming! We need a New Deal.

Those road CAZs are road blocks with 'machine gun nests', in effect.

Came down on a Monday
Somewhere in the midlands
Tasted man tasted flea
Couldn't tell the difference
Asked around on Tuesday
Got nothing from a tree
The guide had said what talks is red
That's all there is to see
Who wants the world
Who wants the world
Who wants the world
Not me
Not me
Not me
Not me
(tell me to rearrange your face
Sometime I'd really like to get
To know you better)
Looked around on Wednesday
Took in all the sights
The promised land they'd left to man
Been ruined over night
Peering through thr portholes
Teardrops in their eyes
The ship they took one last look
At Thursday setting sunrise
Who wants the world
Who wants the world
Who wants the world
Not me
Not me
Not me
Not me
Who wants the world

 
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I’m looking at new trucks currently, and planning on pulling the trigger soon. I considered an EV, but decided it’s too soon for me. Hopefully an ICE vehicle won’t bite me in the ass in 5 years, but I really think I’ll be just fine. One thing I know is that the infrastructure wouldn’t satisfy my needs today, as I will be traveling in areas that aren’t yet supported. If I was only driving locally, I wouldn’t hesitate to go electric.

As to the Clean Air Zone concept, that’s just another way to drive wealth to the politicians’ cronies. I’ll just avoid any such area.
 
I’m looking at new trucks currently, and planning on pulling the trigger soon. I considered an EV, but decided it’s too soon for me. Hopefully an ICE vehicle won’t bite me in the ass in 5 years, but I really think I’ll be just fine. One thing I know is that the infrastructure wouldn’t satisfy my needs today, as I will be traveling in areas that aren’t yet supported. If I was only driving locally, I wouldn’t hesitate to go electric.

As to the Clean Air Zone concept, that’s just another way to drive wealth to the politicians’ cronies. I’ll just avoid any such area.
I thought like that. It can happen very quickly. Hedge, pal.
 
I’m looking at new trucks currently, and planning on pulling the trigger soon. I considered an EV, but decided it’s too soon for me. Hopefully an ICE vehicle won’t bite me in the ass in 5 years, but I really think I’ll be just fine. One thing I know is that the infrastructure wouldn’t satisfy my needs today, as I will be traveling in areas that aren’t yet supported. If I was only driving locally, I wouldn’t hesitate to go electric.

As to the Clean Air Zone concept, that’s just another way to drive wealth to the politicians’ cronies. I’ll just avoid any such area.
In the UK people are being forced to live differently, very differently, even the 'kids to us' are getting serious. We, the sorted, sail on, but they are on battle stations, they have to be. And they are the young and fit and the future. I can sense it starting. THEY ARE FU*KING PISSED OFF BIG TIME!!!! And they are not daft. Something is brewing.
 
I can see that would be annoying. It is just that we have to consider the poor, whom this will impact hardest, on top of already too difficult limits. It's alright changing for the better, but it comes at a cost.

keep in mind that the poor are the ones already impacted most significantly by the pollution from motor vehicles, which we have somehow collectively agreed until recently that we each have the right to spew into the air wherever we please. the new emissions limits on cars are a very, very good thing, and high density, heavily occupied areas with robust public transport seem like reasonable ones to enforce even stricter limits.

the amount of death and illness caused by air pollution is of course very difficult to calculate, but just about any study puts it in the hundreds of thousands globally.

The study links vehicle tailpipe emissions to ~361,000 premature deaths from ambient PM2.5 and ozone worldwide in 2010 and ~385,000 in 2015, equivalent to 11.7% of global ambient PM2.5 and ozone premature deaths in 2010 and 11.4% in 2015.
 
They are beginning to realize the crap they have been left with and are saying 'we are young, this is ours.....we have got you now, you are old and on your way out'. People are waking up and realizing this, thinking this way. The situation is ripe. Or maybe I have it all wrong, haha. Who knows. Personally, i don't care either way, I'm alright Jack.
 
I 'feel' what is needed is beyond our leaders in that it is just too much, harder than the 2nd world war. What to do? What is the right way? Difficult. Well, i suppose a large population is firstly for national security, so a nation needs a lot of people whilst there is that threat of invasion. In which case the population should be kept at least on furlough , not hard as it is now. Machines and new techniques have been invented and the people should enjoy that. It is the future, to think forwards.
 
I should stop writing after this, but when you factor in the inheritance of not just money but station/control.... Good God, could be anybody!...............no test, no nothing!..............very scary such a hand over, nepotism. Maybe that is how all empires ect end, handed on to the totally incompetent by birth. I guess this has always been the case throughout history. Is it any wonder! I'd best shut up now. It is of course true is the competition to supplant offspring. This is where the problem lies, they see it 'is'' sinking but are prepared to go down with the ship rather than hand it over as them having run their best. If only. They need a lot....or
 
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I enjoy your perspective. Thank you. In urban areas here 50% of real estate is dedicated to cars. Without so many of them resources can be reallocated for better purposes. For example low cost housing for workers in a town so they do not need to commute to frontline service jobs that well-off people want, such as restaurant staff. Free parking is not free real estate we just pay for it in other ways with higher prices. That is paid even by those who do not have cars at a food market. People walking will stop into a small urban shop or café, generating local jobs and sales taxes, whilst the cars are passing through. We want our town to be a destination not just a pass-thru. Have you seen what an America Shopping mall looks like? It is mostly parking. Bikes are the very best EV.
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I've read that a person's car reflects their personality.

So.... if a person has no car..... no personality? :D
 
We all take it for granted, travel, us, others, goods, etc. You start taking that away and your first thought is 'that can never happen, too much is reliant upon it. Everything we have built and have is built upon folks and good being able to travel freely. Well, think again. It will hit you hard. You will wonder. You can't conceive it could happen and what it would mean.

This forum, this thread, it is a voice, a measurement of temperature about things, public opinion, So, are we to have a repressed/gagged public, or a free to speak public.

It is easy to give up what you take for granted. If we are to not become slaves then we have to at least keep our voice.

Alas, it is worse, as if that could be. But happiness is determined by someone else's misery. ie money, ie they have to make money mean something.......physical happiness and misery.
 
It wouldn't hurt to slow down. We could have solar powered air ships where a business person could work remotely between WA and CA or from MA to DC. And we could have advanced sailing ships for cargo and highspeed trains instead of jets. The PA Dutch lead a more simple and sustainable lifestyle and they are not unhappy. Their children are more happy.
 
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