Another £3m to help clean up Greater Manchester’s bus fleet

Greater Manchester is set to receive another £3 million government funding to help clean up its bus fleet and improve air quality across the city-region.

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) has been awarded £2,994,000 from the Clean Bus Technology Fund to retrofit 176 vehicles with pollution control equipment technology.

Greater Manchester’s bus operators will now be able to apply for funding to help reduce harmful nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate emissions tailpipe emissions from their vehicles.

The funding announcement complements Greater Manchester’s development of a Clean Air Plan to tackle NO2 exceedances at the roadside.

The draft proposals currently include plans for a £29m Clean Bus Fund to allow Greater Manchester’s bus operators to clean up their fleets.

Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, said: “This government funding to help Greater Manchester’s bus operators clean up their fleets is welcome, but much more is needed.

“Due to industry under-investment in newer, cleaner vehicles, around 90 per cent of buses in and around Greater Manchester currently have older and higher polluting engines, belching out fumes. Our draft Clean Air Plan includes a proposal for a £29m Greater Manchester Clean Bus Fund, so that all the buses on Greater Manchester’s roads are clean.”

The current Clean Air Plan proposals include a Clean Air Zone covering all 10 Greater Manchester local authorities, the largest outside London.  The zone would require owners of high-polluting, non-compliant HGVs, buses, taxis, private hire vehicles, vans and minibuses – but not cars – to pay a daily penalty to drive in Greater Manchester.

Mr Burnham addressed comments on the proposals from the Greater Manchester bus operator partnership, OneBus: “If bus operators choose to take advantage of this funding, which will help them upgrade their vehicles faster, they would not need to pay a penalty to travel in Greater Manchester, so any talk of passing on the cost to passengers is simply misleading.

“Buses are the backbone of our transport network, providing crucial links in our towns and cities. I am committed to investing in and improving our bus services so we get the London-style integrated transport network that Greater Manchester deserves.”

Following TfGM’s earlier successful £3 million bid to the same fund in February last year, £1.87 million has already been allocated to bus operators to retrofit 110 vehicles with pollution control equipment technology to reduce harmful NO2 tailpipe emissions. An estimated further 60 vehicles are to follow.

To support the future Clean Air Plan, Andy Burnham has already written to the Secretary of State for the Environment on behalf of Greater Manchester local authorities to ask for more early funding for the replacement and/or retrofit of buses which contribute to the city-region’s air quality problem.

There are nearly 2,000 buses running in Greater Manchester and around 350 currently have environmentally-friendly Euro VI engines. A further estimated 1,260 vehicles have Euro IV and V engines that could be retrofitted with clean technology to reduce emissions, while the remaining older vehicles cannot be retrofitted.