Bristol's Clean Air Zone cameras will be switched on at exactly midnight as Sunday night becomes Monday morning, as overnight drivers of the most polluting vehicles will be the first to be liable to pay a charge.
The new era of traffic management in the centre of Bristol begins on Monday - and that means that the long-awaited Clean Air Zone regulations come into force from the very start of November 28 - in the first minute after the clock strikes 12.
Drivers using non-compliant vehicles - generally older diesels and petrol-powered cars and vans and larger lorries, buses, coaches and trucks - will be required to pay a charge of either £9 or £100 for bigger vehicles if they are driven into the Clean Air Zone, which stretches from the Brunel Way dual carriageway over the Cumberland Basin at the western end of the Floating Harbour, all the way either side of the river to Temple Meads and Newfoundland Way at the bottom of the M32 into the city centre.
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Bristol City Council has erected distinctive signs at all the entrances to the Clean Air Zone bearing a green facemask symbol, and cameras are in place at every road access into the zone, including the smallest of side roads in residential areas in St Pauls, Hotwells, Ashton Gate, Southville, Bedminster and Totterdown, on the edge of the zone.
Drivers in newer vehicles that comply with the emissions levels - which are estimated to be around three-quarters of all the motorists in Bristol - are not affected by the Clean Air Zone and won't have to pay. But tens of thousands of motorists will be.
When the city council switched on the cameras for three weeks during September as a test-run to see how the systems work, a total of around 95,000 individual drivers were sent letters warning them that, if they made the same journey after November 28, they would be liable for the CAZ charge, and could be fined.
When the Clean Air Zone goes live at midnight on Sunday night, into Monday morning, drivers who cross into the zone in non-compliant, polluting vehicles won't necessarily be fined if they haven't paid the charge. Earlier this month, Bristol Live revealed that the council was instigating a six-week 'grace' period, which means that people who should be fined will be given the chance to simply pay the charge of £9 or £100, rather than the charge and the fine.
That 'grace period' offer only applies to people who pay up within a week of receiving the notification, and only lasts until the first working Monday of January - January 9 - which means that it will be possible to avoid being fined until after Christmas and the New Year.
Read next:
- Where the borders for the scheme will fall street by street
- When will the CAZ charges operate
- Clean Air Zone start date finally announced
- Clean Air Zone fee and how people will be charged
- Bristol Clean Air Zone timeline: the story so far as start date finally announced
- Thousands of drivers 'caught' in Clean Air Zone every day in council test
- Camera error sends Clean Air Zone warning letters to drivers who've never been to Bristol
- Clean Air Zone and underground metro will make cycling safer claim council chiefs
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