Edinburgh traffic: Council sticks to target on cutting car use despite Scottish Government dropping its less ambitious aim

Edinburgh set an official target of reducing car kilometres by 30 per cent by 2030 as part of its broader aim of being a net zero carbon city by 2030, which is a much shorter deadline than the target set by the Scottish Government in its climate change legislation of reaching net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases by 2045.

And the government was pursuing a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres until last month, when Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop said it would not be able to deliver that.

Edinburgh has a low emission zone and plans to stop through traffic on certain key routes | TSPL

Her announcement in the Scottish Parliament followed a report by Audit Scotland earlier in the year, which criticised the government for having no clear plan for meeting the "ambitious and challenging" target.

Ms Hyslop told MSPs: "We will have more realistic targets. I'm reviewing the target, we won't be able to deliver 20 per cent car kilometre reductions. We are reappraising what we are doing."

City transport convener Stephen Jenkinson said he wanted the Capital to take a lead on meeting the challenge of reducing car use. The city, along with Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, has a low emission zone in the city centre and it has plans for stopping through traffic on key city centre routes like the North Bridge / South Bridge corridor and The Mound / George IV Bridge, as well as creating a North-South tram route, though the timescales for these projects are not clear.

Cllr Jenkinson said: “We still have quite strong targets around reducing vehicle kiolmetres in the city and reducing carbon emissions towards net zero.

“All of these things are constantly under review and under pressure. However, a lot of good work has been done over many years to get us on the right track. And rather than do what could be argued is the easy thing to do and give up on these targets, [we plan to] actually keep working towards them.

“When others give up, I'm quite keen that we continue along that path, certainly for the foreseeable future. I think we should be showing leadership in Edinburgh and should be taking a lead.”

He said council officials had been tasked with making sure these targets were “still front and centre of what we do”.