Major update as more diesel buses coming ‘to clean air’

Clean air plan for buses

A major update on Greater Manchester’s new clean air plan has been issued, with more diesel buses coming in ‘to clean the air’.

The new ‘investment-led’ clean air plan replaced the clean air zone (CAZ), which would have charged some vehicles for driving on any non-motorway road in Greater Manchester until it was cancelled.

The decision to abandon the CAZ in early 2022, months before its implementation followed a fierce backlash against Mayor Andy Burnham. Eighteen months later, he unveiled a new plan to clean air by upgrading buses and taxis, the worst-polluting vehicles.

But a new report has revealed projects to convert bus depots in Stockport and Cheetham Hill to make them electric-bus-friendly have been delayed, which means TfGM needs to invest in more ‘clean diesel buses’.

“There’s a decrease of electric buses and more Euro-six buses, so cleaner diesel,” said Eamonn O’Brien, chair of Greater Manchester’s clean air committee. “That’s not what we’d have liked to have seen. But we have to acknowledge we can’t have as many electric buses if we do not have the depot infrastructure in place.

“Issues at Stockport and Queens Road present a practical change to [the plan]. This is not a rowing back of our ambitions to go all-electric by the end of the decade. In any case [the new diesel buses] still contribute to cleaning the air.”

The same report also revealed Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) said it ‘found an issue in emissions modelling’ when it drew up its simulations for the new clean air plan last year.

That was because ‘a formula in the modelling tool had not been updated to reflect the government’s changed guidance on the performance of its bus retrofit programme’ which meant ‘model outputs underestimated the amount of primary nitrogen dioxide, and therefore the predicted nitrogen dioxide concentrations’.

Despite the setbacks, TfGM has still come to the same conclusion that the investment-led plan is ‘the only option’ that hits emissions targets ‘in the shortest possible time and by 2026 at the latest’.

Councillor O’Brien added: “We are working to do the right thing in the right way of getting our air elan while also protecting business.”

The committee also called on the government to allow TfGM to take down the 1,309 clean air zone signs currently in-situ across Greater Manchester, which have been plastered with ’under review’ stickers because they ‘are no longer required’.