Startling news on cars - they're getting smaller
12 February 2009
Excellent news from the far off land of Edinburgh, where a proposal from Green Councillor Steve Burgess was approved on Wednesday, ensuring that, from next year, parking permit charges will be based on a car's carbon emissions.
The scheme was finally signed-off by the Council after more than a year of planning, and a public consultation process which found local people supported the scheme by a ratio of three to one in favour.
This is a great result, and another sign that people are really starting to see the point of incentives to drive cleaner cars.
It helps that the way the Green proposals are structured is very progressive. By cutting the annual charge to £15 for the cleanest cars and doubling it (to £320) for the most gas-guzzling, Edinburgh's parking scheme is not aiming to raise money but to give real rewards to those making ecologically sound choices.
Edinburgh's is the first variable parking charge scheme to be introduced in Scotland, following on from Richmond, Norwich, Islington, Camden and Haringey, who have similar programmes in place already while Westminster Council gives free parking to electric vehicles (this kind of thing is catching on fast, so apologies to any I've forgotten).
This is just one more piece of evidence that the general public are showing increasingly willing to make the shift to cleaner cars, although I'm well aware that rising fuel costs and reduced incomes may well be a bigger factor than green concerns for the people making those choices.
New car sales figures from my nemesis, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed something rather startling for 2008. While overall car sales were down 11% vs 2007, the smaller ‘mini' car segment actually grew, and this is continuing despite petrol prices coming back down in recent months.
This January, the SMMT's figures show that small car sales were up 41% compared with January last year, while overall car sales were down 31%.
In the make and model charts, the same trend is happening. The little Ford Fiesta (typically 128 g/km - look cars up on the VCA database here) has now been at number one for three months, taking over from its big brother the Focus (around 155 g/km), which held the top spot for ten years.
Finally, check out this chart, from the SMMT report, which shows the annual change in CO2 emissions of new cars over the past decade:
2008 shows a massive leap (ok, a 4% improvement) in average fuel efficiency. This is in sharp contrast to what happened at the height of the 4x4 craze in 2004, when reductions in CO2 practically ground to a halt, prompting the formation of the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s.
Obviously, I'm extremely cheered by all this. And it gives me hope that, despite the pro-motorist stance of our antediluvian (and sweary - don't he make you proud) Mayor of London, we'll see more CO2-based charging schemes in the future as momentum gathers.
With more people in cleaner cars, and gas-guzzlers a smaller and smaller minority, public backing for incentive schemes that give discounts to green motorists will only grow, making variable-rate parking schemes much more likely to be introduced by other local authorities.
Me
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