Edinburgh's ghost bus could be banned from city centre over emission levels

Popular Edinburgh ghost bus could be banned from city centre

Councillors want to ban Edinburgh's ghost bus under strict emission rules for the city centre. The bus’s operators, who offer 75-minute tours highlighting the haunted history of the Capital’s favourite attractions, use a classic Routemaster vehicle which is exempt from the city’s new Low Emission Zone (LEZ) rules because it is designated as a historic vehicle.

But City Centre SNP councillor Finlay McFarlane claims businesses who constantly run old vehicles within the zone should not qualify for the exemption. And he won support from other members of Edinburgh’s transport committee for officials to look into how commercially-operated historic vehicles could be removed from the LEZ “white list”.

He said: “We’re asking residents, licensed taxis and licensed buses to comply with the LEZ so we have a healthier air quality, but there are unfortunately some commercial operations that seem to be able to continue thanks to the historical vehicle exemption. I don’t really think that's fair.”

Edinburgh's ghost bus offers regular 75-minute tours of the Capital's most haunted attractions. Picture: Lisa Ferguson.

The LEZ will ban an estimated 20,000 vehicles in and around the Capital from entering a 1.2 square mile area of the city centre. It affects diesel cars registered before September 2015 and petrol cars registered before January 2006, as well as heavy goods vehicles and buses that do not meet the Euro VI emission requirements.

‘Fly in the face of what we’re trying to achieve’

The historic vehicles exemption – which is laid down nationally – applies to vehicles over 30 years old which are no longer in production and have not undergone major conversion. Cllr McFarlane said it was introduced with classic car enthusiasts in mind, not commercial businesses.

And he made clear it was not just the ghost bus that would currently escape when the LEZ starts to be enforced in 2024. He said: “There are several historic buses operating tours or parties, primarily driving round the city centre. These operations are eight or nine hours a day and so fly in the face of what we're trying to achieve with the LEZ.”

But he said there was a difference between commercially-operated historic vehicles which were driving around the city centre all the time and others which might be there occasionally, such as classic cars used for weddings or Lothian Buses running vintage vehicles on Doors Open Days, which he said should be allowed.

Cllr McFarlane said the LEZ was designed to improve air quality by discouraging the most-polluting vehicles from entering the zone, but the hours spent driving around the LEZ by commercial historic vehicles would make them above-average contributors of vehicle emissions. And he argued removing the exemption would help give the companies affected a motivation to look again at their operations.

He said: “They're not stuck with these vehicles – there's the opportunity to upgrade them, to bring them up to standard. These are the investments we're asking other trades to make, such as licensed taxis and buses, so it's treating everybody fairly. There is also no need for them to have a 'historic' vehicle, there's nothing to stop them driving a modern one that’s decked out to look like a historical vehicle.”

Edinburgh Ghost Bus Tours were contacted for comment.