The emission zone covers an area between the M8 motorway to the north and west, the River Clyde to the south, and the Saltmarket/High Street to the east. However, the M8 itself is not part of the low-emission zone.
Glasgow City Council has installed signs and road markings at all entry points, and automatic number plate recognition cameras are being installed to detect non-compliant vehicles.
However, it has emerged that foreign vehicles that don’t meet the requirements can in theory escape payment or punishment.
Commenting on the issue with the LEZ enforcement system, a Glasgow City Council representative told the Scottish Daily Express:
“All vehicles coming into Glasgow’s LEZ are legally required to meet the emission standards. However, the LEZ enforcement system cannot access emission standard information for foreign-registered vehicles. These vehicles, likely to represent a very small proportion of entrants into Glasgow’s LEZ, will not receive a penalty charge notice at this time.”
Moreover, according to the Glasgow Times, when the system initially launched last Thursday, no non-compliant vehicles that entered the LEZ were fined for lack of payment. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that the enforcement system was operational.
The same report adds that the council’s own pick-up trucks for removing illegally parked cars aren’t eligible to enter the zone. The paper writes that private companies with compliant vehicles are having to be used to make up for the problem.
In response to a question concerning this, a Glasgow City Council told the local newspaper: “As the council uplift vehicles are non-compliant, we will be using private contractors to support parking enforcement in the zone area.”
Photo: Chris McKenna (Thryduulf), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons