Oxford’s pilot zero emission zone (ZEZ) launched in February 2022. The ZEZ covers a small area of central Oxford, including Cornmarket and adjacent streets. Motor vehicles can enter the ZEZ, as long as they pay to do so.

A much larger ZEZ is planned for 2023 – 2024. The ZEZ expansion would potentially include the entire city centre, including all of the following “perimeter” points: Magdalen Bridge, The High Street, Longwall, South Parks Road, Parks Roads, St Giles, Beaumont Street, part of Walton Street, Worcester Street, Hythe Bridge Street, Oxpens Road, Hollybush Row, Oxpens Road and part of St Aldate’s. Details of this plan can be found here.

OBAG recognises the need to reduce air pollution in the city – especially in those streets where pollution levels are particularly high. However, we are concerned by several aspects of both the pilot and wider scheme. Businesses, residents, and visitors to Oxford are encouraged to visit the Zero Emission Zone website, to understand how the scheme will affect them, and to learn more about the planned daily charges.

Pilot scheme concerns

The county council claims in its formal consultation document that the pilot scheme will achieve two things: firstly, that it will “reduce air pollution levels, tackle the climate emergency, [and] improve the health of residents, workers and visitors in Oxford and beyond” and secondly that it will “allow the councils to gain useful experience and information to inform the ZEZ.” On both counts we believe that this is flawed: 

• In the first case, consider the streets affected: Cornmarket is pedestrianised for the majority of the day; the part of Market Street highlighted is currently under construction so sees no traffic at all (and when construction finishes it will still meet Cornmarket Street at one end so is essentially a dead end for car traffic anyway); St Michael’s Street and Ship Street both see minimal traffic as they have one end meeting Cornmarket and so are likewise essentially dead ends to car traffic; and New Inn Hall Street and Shoe Lane are totally inaccessible from one direction and so similarly see minimal traffic. Queen Street is the only street that sees meaningful traffic pass through it... but that traffic is for the vast majority of the day exclusively buses and taxis - and those are exempt from the scheme! With this in mind, we believe the scheme will make a negligible difference to pollution levels. 

• In the second case, consider that if such streets are largely car-free anyway, they will also not “allow the councils to gain useful experience and information to inform the ZEZ”. An effective pilot scheme should be implemented in an area that serves as a representative sample of the full roll out area, yet the area chosen will not do that. We are concerned that the pilot scheme will not provide sufficient useful data to have a positive impact on the design of the wider roll-out, and that installation of an intermediary ZEZ before the full area is covered must be considered.

• We are keen to understand what analysis is planned and how success and failure will both be quantified before moving forward with the green zone roll-out. We do not believe this has yet been satisfactorily addressed.

ZEZ roll-out: damaging to business

We believe that without extensive exemptions provided, the ZEZ charges essentially amount to a business tax: many vehicles likely to be impacted are commercial: tradespeople, suppliers and so on - those not afforded the discount currently proposed, which it seems is only available to local businesses with fixed premises (though this is of course welcome to them), but not their suppliers, despite many of these also being local businesses themselves.

Many suppliers and couriers, contractors, service traders and those providing a wide range of other services are unlikely in the current climate to be able to afford to buy an electric trade vehicle. As such, in many cases it is surely likely that such businesses will incorporate ZEZ charges into their fees - essentially passing them on to local shop-front businesses. We believe the council has not given sufficient consideration to this issue.

Until a large proportion of businesses and individuals have the funds to acquire electric vehicles, the roll out will surely have a huge, negative impact on the economic activities of the city at a time when we are already struggling. We are concerned that the council has not sufficiently considered how best to help local city and rural residents make the switch to an electric vehicle, given how prohibitively expensive they are at the moment. This does not appear to have been addressed in any detail. 

There are also currently grossly insufficient numbers of charging points available across the city for such a scheme to encourage meaningful uptake of electric car use. 

Increased pollution levels

We believe the implementation of the wider zone will likely push huge numbers of car drivers to take circuitous routes around the zones: pollution levels will thus be relocated (and possibly increase with the extra distance travelled), not removed. The choice of pilot zone location is such that this hypothesis cannot be proven however (or disproved, crucially). Since the area chosen for the pilot scheme is in no way representative of the larger area proposed for inclusion in the second ZEZ green zone, if the decision is still made for the pilot scheme to go ahead, there should surely at least be introduced a further intermediate zone that covers a small part of the green zone - ideally frequently used (by cars that is) city centre streets, to provide a representative impression of how travel patterns and pollution levels are likely to be impacted, before any full roll out is implemented.