New Emissions Based Parking Scheme Scrapped
Saturday, 24. July 2010
I can’t remember writing about the emissions based parking charges introduced by Richmond council in South West London although I seem to remember reading about it somewhere. Anyway, forget it as it’s just been scrapped. The scrapping of the scheme flies in the face of those that argue that local authorities and central Government use the ‘green argument’ as a means to screw more money out of the motorist when in fact they are simply lining their pockets. They charged £300 per annum to those with cars that emitted more than 225g/km of CO2, six times the rate charged to drivers who drive cars emitting less than 120g/km of CO2. However, it seems that rather than encourage drivers to get smaller cars the larger car parking permits grew whilst lower emission cars dropped, defeating the object. Richmond is now rethinking this as it was their sole intension to make the town greener with lower emissions but this scheme clearly hasn’t worked. York, Edinburgh and Brighton have similar schemes but they have no intention of scrapping them yet. Any ideas on what would be a fairer scheme? By Graham Hill
