I live in Bristol and any cursory examination of its city centre is that it is dying. This is in part due to the council's insistence on banishing cars from it. The CAZ is only the latest initiative in this respect. I suspect it will be the final nail in the coffin.
I live within walking distance of the city centre. I could shop there using only the transport of my own legs. But because the choice of shops is becoming more limited every day - unless you want a coffee or to donate to a charity - my expeditions are more likely to be successful if I go to Cribbs Causeway, which is a massive out of town centre to the North West and is importantly just off the M5.
Yup sounds exactly like the City centre where I live - once upon a time it used to be a thriving retail hub, now all you can buy is coffee. Retail outlets come and then fail at the drop of the hat, charity shops and boarded up premises abound. The once landmark stores one by one are disappearing - Woolies, long gone, BHS - no more, Top Shop - gone. Wilko, likely gone in months.
So yup, you are right - it must be all down to the low emission zone and other 'anti car' measures the council have put in place.
Oh, hold on - that's not right. My city has no low emission zone, nor does it have low traffic neighbourhood initiatives. Nor any meaningful bus lanes and cycle infrastructure. In fact the whole notion of what you might call the 'anti car' agenda seems to have completely passed it by.
So maybe if your city centre and local high streets are in trouble, just as mine are, you might want to think a bit more broadly about why that is. And frankly it likely has little or nothing to do with the measures you describe. Indeed I think the key issues are:
1: On line shopping
2: Business rates
3: The ongoing covid legacy
High streets have been shifting from being predominantly retail and 'functional' (banks, building societies, post offices) to social and leisure destinations for decades - long before ULEZ (or equivalents) were a twinkle in some metro-mayors eyes.
So perhaps the CEZ in Bristol or the ULEZ in London has had a minor impact on the high street - but actually evidence from the analysis of such schemes across a whole range of european cities with LEZs suggest that the impact is actually positive, not negative. Here is some actual evidence rather than your anecdote about Bristol vs my anecdote about St Albans.
https://cleancitiescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Clean-Cities-briefing_-Why-fewer-polluting-cars-in-cities-are-good-news-for-local-shops_1.pdf'The analysis therefore demonstrates that low emission zones can be a win-win-win solution for clean air, the climate and the local economy:
● Low emission zones and similar policies that reduce car use have generally had positive effects on the turnover of the retail sector in cities,
● Retail vacancy (the number of empty shops) can be reduced.
This can be explained by several factors:
● Car use plays a less important role for customers than shop owners think,
● Customers that walk, cycle, wheel or use public transport spend more overall
as they visit local shops more frequently and represent a higher proportion of all customers.'Amazingly in a part of outer London (exactly where the 'battle' over ULEZ expansion is taking place) retailer thought that over 60% of their customers got there by car - the reality was only 20%.
Having provided evidence, back to anecdote - I was visiting various parts of East London last week (I work there but was actually not just going from home to office and back) - thriving, busy, full of vitality, packed full of local independent retail outlets of all types. Guess what - the various places I was visiting are all smack in the current ULEZ.
Oh and by the way the lungs and neural development of our children are more important, in my opinion, than the 'so-called' freedoms of the pro-car lobby to drive whatever car they like where-ever they want, regardless of the consequences to health.
