Time for city council to stop seeing car drivers as bogeymen - Sue Webber

Only when blindingly obvious outcomes become reality, like the Corstorphine bus gate fiasco or the West Craigs low traffic neighbourhood, are more sensible measures adopted.

Along the way the council manages to alienate people who are just as enthusiastic about reducing the city’s carbon footprint as transport officers, but have the benefit of detailed local knowledge which would produce better schemes, if only they were listened to in the first place.

It will be the same with the Low Emission Zones, which cost over £13 million of taxpayers’ money to set up here and in the other three big cities, making a minimal difference to air quality within the boundaries, but generating significant increases in the immediate periphery.

But they will make plenty of money for councils ─ over £1 million for Glasgow in the first year, to June last year ─ and with 6000 fines issued that month here, when the Edinburgh scheme went live, the council could rake in around £2 million.

These schemes might make little difference to net zero, but they have quickly become significant cash cows which will only encourage their expansion when revenues drop as drivers with non-compliant vehicles get wise.

It’s the same story with controlled parking zones, generating cash while just displacing non-resident parking. It means that eventually everyone in Edinburgh with a car but no driveway being forced to buy a permit without the guarantee of a nearby parking place.

Just don’t expect to see the money invested in better park and ride facilities or on repairing our shocking road surfaces because neither the council nor Scottish Government are interested in incentivising you to change your habits, just punish you for the ones you have.

For these reasons I was delighted to lead a debate in the Scottish Parliament yesterday on behalf of persecuted car owners, not just in Edinburgh but across Scotland and to point out how important efficient road transport is to Scotland’s economy.

Net Zero zealotry extends to the pointless plans to introduce 50mph speed limits on single carriageway roads, but the clue to the motivation is the failure to accelerate the expansion of the electric vehicle charging network, because it is not just emissions which get up the nose of the Green lobby, but the very principle of car ownership itself.

That’s why official reports and talking shops refer to “private car ownership”

They would far rather return to the days when most people relied on public transport and private car ownership was a rarity ─ it’s OK for those with ministerial cars. But the world has changed, particularly in Edinburgh, where so many people working in the city live further afield because of housing costs, but who find buses and trains unreliable, infrequent or non-existent.

We didn’t expect to win yesterday’s debate, but national transport policies need our common-sense approach, to do what’s right both for the national economy and for those who would love to use good public transport alternatives if only they existed.

It is stick every time and no carrot, and now they have jettisoned the Green extremists it’s time the SNP stop viewing car drivers as bogeymen.