r/Glasgow Tools

You say another tax on the motorist, but it's the case that driving in the UK is (and has historically always been) subsidised to an extent that utterly dwarves spending on any other means of personal transportation, whether public transport provision or active travel infrastructure.

Yes, as an individual driver you pay VED, you pay to hire or purchase your vehicle outright, you pay for fuel. It may feel like you as an individual are spending a lot. But you are taking for granted the monumental capital funding devoted year on year to building and maintaining the road network that allows people to drive cars across almost every square KM of land. Money that ultimately comes from general taxation, not "motorist" specific taxes.

Motorist specific charges wouldn't even begin to cover a fraction of the total spent facilitating driving in the UK.

Our cities and entire modern economy and have been reconfigured to suit the needs of the individual motorist, and LEZs are a small, localized means of rebalancing the urban environment, to limit the impact of pollution on people who largely do not cause that pollution.

In Glasgow, around 50% of residents do not have access to a car - predominantly poorer Glaswegians. Added to that, a huge proportion of the vehicles which do come into the city every day though, polluting and taking up unecessary road space, are coming from wealthier suburban zones in nearby local authority areas.

Sorry, but I struggle to see this as an injustice or something targetting the poor.