As both councils and communities make movements towards becoming more environmentally-aware, some are taking initiatives that tackle one of the major polluters, vehicles. These initiatives come in the form of Clean Air Zones which (depending on the zone class) will charge certain vehicles that don’t meet emission requirements for entering a set zone usually in city centres. It is expected that mainly Busses, Coaches and HGV’s will be the main vehicles targeted by this scheme, with some areas also targeting Private Hire Vehicles (PHV) and most diesel vehicles that were sold before 2015.
With this new initiative expecting to be implemented as early as 2019, it gives many people very little time to adapt and replace their vehicles with ones that comply with the regulations. Additionally, companies with a corporate fleet may find themselves with no idea on how to accommodate these changes and regulations. Many more companies will also overlook the effects that these clean air zones will have on their corporate fleets.
Companies with large-scale fleets may already have a team whose specific purpose is to optimise the fleet and keep it up-to-date with new laws and restrictions on what is permitted in the city. Yet for smaller fleets, it may be up to an individual or people who specialise in other areas to order the fleet. Therefore, it is critical for smaller corporate fleets to be aware of these Clean Air Zones, where they operate, and the charges incurred from entering them with a vehicle that doesn’t comply with their standards.
The main areas looking to implement Clean Air Zones within the near future are Birmingham, Derby, Leeds, Nottingham and Southampton. These are all very prominent, business-oriented cities and because of this, a large number of companies that operate within those areas will have to consider the premise of having to either account for these charges, swap out their fleet vehicles, or consider other methods of travel rather than driving. Fortunately for businesses that would take the latter option, there are a number of alternatives for business travel ranging from Car Clubs and Public Transport to allow for these charges to be avoided. Mobilleo is a platform that will work out the most cost-effective method of travel, accounting expenditures such as petrol costs and congestion charge. This allows businesses the opportunity to collate options and decide on which would be a more suitable manner of business travel. This being considerably more effective when compared to owning their own fleet of vehicles and having to accommodate all the accompanying costs they bring.
Even simply passing through cities with Clean Air Zones can incur a charge therefore many businesses will now have to consider what route their fleets are taking to reach their destination. By using Mobilleo’s route planner feature many of these hard-to-account-for costs will be brought up and added to the final cost of the journey. It also gives users alternative routes that bypass/skip these charges ultimately bringing the total cost of the journey to minimal expenditure. The platform provides freedom of the choice to the user allowing them to weigh the options between convenience and practicality.
Within the coming years, these charges will gradually be implemented across a number of cities and then expanding to many more. When looking at the charges from a long-term perspective, it would incur serious costs to companies who overlook them. Companies of all sizes should look to using platforms that measure costs of travel or look towards booking business travel using alternative methods of transport, all of which can be done using Mobilleo.