Low Emission Zone could bring clean air to Aberdeen – but it needs your help

Aberdeen City Council have published a range of options for the city’s Low Emission Zone and are asking what you think.

Low Emission Zones (LEZs) are areas in city centres where the most polluting vehicles are banned from entering. They are one of the most effective ways to protect people from dirty air and work successfully in over 200 cities across Europe.

As this stuff can get a bit complicated, here’s a short summary that can help you respond to their consultation.

How to respond to the Aberdeen LEZ consultation

It’ll only take around 5 minutes, and it’s really important as many people as possible respond. We need to demand ambitious action to clean our air, improve the city centre, and move Aberdeen to a transport system that works for people and planet.

The consultation will ask you what you think about each of the Low Emission Zone options. There are 8 different options, but it’s basically 4 versions and then for each one of them an alternate where Denburn Road is excluded.

4A is the best option for Aberdeen. It covers the largest area of the city centre, meaning it will lead to genuine reductions in toxic pollution. Smaller zones can simply displace traffic, leading to increases around the perimeter of a zone. Option 4A also covers all the persistent pollution hotspots that Aberdeen has suffered in recent years. Choosing another option, for a smaller zone, would fail to take the action needed to tackle these hotspots.

It will also ask you about “grace periods”, which means how long before the Zone is up and running. The longer the grace periods, the longer we wait for clean air. So please opt for the shortest grace period of 1 year.

It’s quite easy to do and shouldnt take you too long. The deadline for responses is Sunday 25 October.
Once you have completed it, why not send it on to a friend or family member who also cares about clean air.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s full response can be viewed here