r/Glasgow Tools

I've never really engaged with any of the discourse on the LEZ so forgive my ignornace if this has been brought up before, but I generally think the LEZ and current road tax is naive.

For example. I'm a car and motorcycle guy. My daily driver is a small LEZ compliant eco hatchback with absolutely no horsepower. 60~mpg, low emissions.

My motorcycle's emissions (at least in hydrocarbons) easily surpasses most cars on the road. It's exempt from LEZ, probably even the ULEZ.

I do less than 3k miles on my motorcycle every year. I pay about £120 road tax on it.

My eco hatch costs me about £30.

I still own an old beater of a toyota celica I used to drive for fun (probably less than 2k miles per year) that now costs £645 to tax for a year.

My dream project car is a subaru impreza and that'll probably end up being over a £1000 for road tax and, similar to the motorbike, won't be driven long distance or many miles in a year.

I am not a rich man. These are my hobbies that I put years of effort into.

The point that I'm ultimately trying to make though is that current climate and environmental policies don't really capture this story. I don't take it personally, but I can completely see someone feeling singled out. After all, when I do drive into the city centre I can feel my sensible choice of car being dwarved by a euro6 compliant straight 6 three litre land rover that does more damage to the road than any of my vehicles could ever do. Yet I could easily pay 20x the road tax they do.

When the LEZ switches from euro 5 to euro 6, my hatch will no longer be permitted in the city centre but those cars will.

I understand that it's not meant to be targeted and trying to solve an issue with a broad stroke, but I do think that climate change is now progressing to the point (as in emissions and energy usage are still increasing, not decreasing) that I feel such naive approaches are untenable.

We need policies that capture how vehicles are actually used.