A year on from Birmingham, UK’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ) becoming fully operational, there has been a significant fall in the percentage of the most polluting vehicles entering the city centre, with air quality improving as a result.
A reduction in the most polluting traffic (falling from 18.7% on 1 June 2021 to 9.2% in April 2022) helped cut the overall levels of nitrogen dioxide by 13% in the first six months of the scheme.
The Birmingham CAZ covers the area within the city’s A4540 Middleway (but not the Middleway itself) and is designed to encourage drivers of the most polluting vehicles to upgrade or replace their vehicle.
Sixty-seven monitoring and enforcement cameras are operating at locations across Birmingham. The enforcement scheme was designed and installed by Yunex Traffic, a separately managed company of Siemens Mobility.
Yunex Traffic’s Sicore II ANPR cameras identify and register every vehicle that enters the CAZ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The cameras provide three-lane coverage with just a single camera. There are more than 1,000 Sicore II cameras installed and enforcing schemes in the UK alone.
Wilke Reints, managing director of Yunex Traffic in the UK, says: “Local authorities such as Birmingham are clearly seeing the impact that Clean Air Zones have on air quality in our towns and cities. With Yunex Traffic schemes also operating in London and Portsmouth and soon to be in Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield too, we’re delighted that our ANPR-based enforcement solutions are helping make our cities safer and better places to live, work and study in – and to visit.”
Images: Yunex Traffic and Adobe Stock.
