Ulez expansion - live within new zone, do i need new car then?

[Redditchat]

Just that. I live in the expansion zone, car is diesel, need to drive it daily for school & work but have zero money to buy a new one.

Has something been announced for people like me?

Also i don't qualify for low income, im just above it but still stretched.

I used to live in zone 2 and could easily have managed without a car. We are now in zone 6 and just outside the ulez expansion. Public transport is a completely different kettle of fish out here. We are about two miles from the nearest bus stop, and that doesn't go anywhere useful for us. The journey between our house and our daughter's school is along a single track road with no pavements. It's extremely hilly here as we are on the North Downs so cycling is possible but challenging. The road next to ours is a 1 in 10 hill. The outskirts of Greater London are semi rural. People really are reliant on cars here.

All the people saying you don't need a car in London, should look at a map of how far the ULEZ now goes out.

In some residential areas of outer London the public transport isn't actually that widely available, frequent, and 24/7

@Redditchat Do you have the certificate of conformity for your car from when you bought it? It’s a white A5 sized piece of paper usually tucked in the book pack. They were issued on every car since 1996 and it may confirm that your vehicle emissions do meet the requirements of a ULEZ exemption. The system I think is lazy and therefore only exempts vehicles that it thinks can only have EURO4 (petrol) and EURO 6(diesel) engines fitted from the registration age info at the DVLA. However you may have a compliant engine in your car even if the reg age suggests otherwise. Many people are getting these from the manufacturer (there is a charge) and filing them now with TFL to get an exemption. Do not leave it late to check as manufacturers are being swamped with requests and it’ll be one poor six trying to deal with it. And you’ll need time to get the TFL exemption sorted. Fingers crossed for you.

By way of comfort, the mp’s whose regions fall unexpectedly within the charge Zone but whose residents are not in Greater London (and therefore cannot vote for the mayor) are seeking to challenge the extensions into their areas. Fingers crossed for that also.

Plenty of people who work in london but don’t live there need a car to get in. Plenty of people who live in london need a car for their job.

It’s a bit shit really op. I’m massively lucky that somehow my old banger is ulez compliant, when they first announced its expansion I thought I was going to have to try and find a cheap, compliant replacement for a car that’s been amazingly reliable. Do check your cars reg on the website.

Our 2004 petrol is exempt according to the checker so do individually check your vehicles, age isn't necessarily as they have said

Of course not. I'm always happy to stuff my dogs in a basket alongside my bags and load it all in a bicycle to travel to see my family in Germany, for example. Need extra care with balancing it all, especially when it rains but hey ho..

And using the Tube with a Billy or two from Ikea is a piece of cake. I find other passengers very understanding.

We live in zone 6, but are over a mile from the nearest bus stop or station. So that's a 20min walk to even get to any public transport. (Longer on the way back, as we live up a very steep hill).

Trains are only every 30mins, and there are only a couple of bus routes, so it's not like there is a bus every 5mins.

So yes, actually, unless I want a 20min car journey to take 90min+ via public transport, we need a car.

Khan needs to improve public transport in Greater London before forcing the ULEZ rollout through.

Khan need to provide us with more green spaces and plant the thousands of trees he promised instead of pushing big building projects. It's the building that causes pollution, stuffs more people in and robs us of any greenery still holding, not just the cars.

But he is a one trick pony.

We live one street into the expanded zone - and don’t have a car. Use zip car / Uber and get deliveries. Works out cheaper - and means we do a lot of walking and buses. You seem a bit surprised- this has been coming for years.

Totally agree with you. This is being pushed through without the infrastructure in some areas to support it.

You need to check what euro standard your car is euro 6 diesel and euro 4 petrol are fine. Use the TfL vehicle checker. Lots of older vehicles are compliant - depends on make and model.

I can see you have a very small imagination.

Why not use public transport?

If we are serious about protecting the planet then people need to make changes in how they live. Most people in London don’t need a car. We have never had one for environmental reasons.

For most people it's worth keeping your old car and only using it occasionally and paying the charge.

As a happy resident of the current inner London ULEZ zone, (with a very cheap compliant old petrol banger) I agree.

I'll defend the ULEZ principle against a lot of the misleading knee jerk criticism, but am also very aware
a) how relatively poorly served for public transport a lot of the Greater London fringes are (although don't say that to a resident of Northumberland unless you want to be judged severely).
b) the state of play of the second hand car market at the mo. Ten year old petrol cars in decent condition at a low price are like hens teeth - it's not the same as it was five years ago when you could pick them up for a song.

I agree that public transport is very good compared with much of the country, but we do venture outside of London occasionally you know. My DS has football matches all over Surrey at the weekends. We are allowed hobbies and interests outside of the charging zone!

Its not even the problem for travelling out of zone 6 further into the countryside, theres a massive problem with travelling around the outskirts of London rather than going into central London in a linear manner. A journey that takes about 15 min in a car can easily take over an hour on the bus.

Yes,people can manage on public transport but when you have kids to run around then get yourself to work it’s just not doable.

I’m another anti social hours worker. There’s no way I’m walking home from the train station at midnight!!

There is a real lack of joined up thinking. Since covid our trains have been halved, from 4 per hour to 2. Needless to say there is no tube out here. And if I want to go a couple of miles across rather than into London I would need to go halfway to London and then back out, taking hours.

On a good day, with minimal traffic, our journey to school/work is 20 minutes. We had to use public transport once when the car broke down and the journey took over 90 minutes.

The trains that used to be a little bit shit are now super shit thanks to South Eastern changing the routes/timetables etc.

This is only true for inner London in our area to get to the north of the borough you have to go in then out to get to work, my husband has 3 buses...90 minutes or a 40 minute drive.
I have 3 disabled relatives who live in 2 different directions within my town I visit twice a day to do this by bus It would be over an hour and 2 buses twice a day by car is half an hour.
I can't afford a new car and even if I was eligible for the scrappage ...I'm not...I couldn't afford the remaining amount to buy a new car you can't use it on second hand ....if you need the scheme you don't have £8k or more spare. I will be giving up work and so will my husband as he can't afford a compliant van. We won't see our grandchildren as much as they live in Surrey a 40 minute M25 journey but from here it's into Paddington across to Waterloo and out again 2 buses, 2 overground and tubes

The worst part of some of these initiatives is that they have completely failed to take women’s safety into account. The same with LTNs that mean people can’t get a taxi home to their door safely late at night.

I can absolutely see that some people still need to drive whilst living in London, but I think for a lot of people it's become the obvious go-to when there are other alternatives. Just from some of the examples on this thread, you can get your weekly shopping delivered, you can get your Billy bookcases delivered, you can use a zip car for driving the kids to football or visiting family, you can cycle to work if it's just a few miles away especially if your work is during unsociable hours and the streets are empty.

I lived in London with two kids for 6 years and we didn't have a car. I cycled 7 miles to work, I carried my shopping home in one of those bags on wheels or got it delivered, my kids scooted the mile they had to school, I took the train to see in-laws or if we were going to the beach. I think I rented a car twice in 6 years, and that was a lot cheaper than if I had owned a car.

Sometimes it will take longer on public transport or by foot/bike but if you can't afford to run a car then there are options. You just have adjust and not expect to live life exactly like you did with a car.

Must be tough doing that on a weekly basis, maybe you could hire a car to go away with, or arrange to have your Billy bookcases delivered....

I'm not a fan of people having to sell their cars though, was there much notice?

All those saying people in London don’t need a car. I’d like to point out that, apart from the fact many in London do need a car, the ULEZ zones are being pushed out to London boroughs. Some of these are in Kent where there is poor transport links. The ULEZ zone is not just limited to London! We live very close to a London borough. That town is where our dentist and doctor is, for every appointment we will have to pay ULEZ charges and we have no means to buy a car that’s compliant! There is also a practically non existent public transport system from our village