So who do you want to be the next Mayor of London?

[Theinjuredcleaner]

It's Count Binface/Lord Buckethead for me. I don't think he could do a worse job than his predecessors.

It is genuinely weird that people say a car isn’t needed in London. It’s true that car ownership in London is lower than outside London, but it’s still perfectly common and necessary to run a car, especially in outer London.

MN must have a huge over-representation of retired people or cycling enthusiasts.

No doubt Khan will get back in. But he will be presiding over a very divided and unhappy city. The interests of inner and outer London are becoming further and further apart. But then Khan’s voter base is in inner London.

@FlakyPoet Johnson introduced all the cycling routes ‘Little Holland’ schemes, which realised funds to local councils to regenerate areas. The ULEZ was conceived on his watch.

With Kahn, I can’t think of a single initiative or actionable vision he has conceived or expressed.

Johnson clearly saw himself as a Man Who Would Go Down In History, and he was always "actioning initiatives" to ensure that would happen. But I could have done without his failed garden bridge (costing £43m of public money before being ditched), his expensive Boris buses (£160m for 600 and the design had to be modified later) ... not to mention the £25,000 he funnelled to the company run by his girlfriend, Jennifer Arcuri.

I'll stick with Khan and his excellent (if less grandiose) Hopper fares, cyle provisions and free school meals for primary kids.

Well, the talk has been about pay-per-mile charging. But that could equally just be opposition parties stirring.

I would guess that in a few years the threshold for compliant cars will change, to catch more vehicles.

Really, though, if he is serious about air quality, then surely only EVs should be exempt from ULEZ charges.

Even leaving aside pollution, there will always be a strong contingent of people who would vote for a reduction in cars and better public transport in London (can’t comment on other cities), because a city with mainly pre war housing stock wasn’t designed for cars.

You don’t have to agree with them, but that is democracy.

It's not opposition stirring when TfL have a team of people working on a proposal already . 🙄 I know because my husband works for them.

Is your husband working directly on mileage charging?

BTW I don’t disbelieve you at all. I’m interested because I recently had a discussion about this with a Khan fan who claimed the press reports were all fabricated. So it would be good to get first-hand confirmation.

But most people have ULEZ compliant cars.

If there is such huge division, why are there not more obvious signs of discontent in London? Where are the posters and car stickers? Are they just in other parts of London? (I acknowledge that it is a big place and I have rarely ventured North of Wembley IKEA)

I would absolutely vote for someone who said they would make outer London's public transport as good as inner London's!

But there again is the difference: inner London, not suited for cars. Outer London, very much suited for cars. This is why the outer boroughs have seen so much more opposition to ULEZ arriving in their areas than in the first 2 waves, because the public transport just isn't comparable. Especially south of the river.

If you want people to give up their cars, you have to put decent alternatives in first.

@merrymouse in our area (outer zone 6) the ULEZ cameras are regularly spray painted, cables cut, or sometimes even the posts completely cut down, and cameras also go missing.

(To be clear, though, I don't agree with people doing any of that, it's vandalism and shouldn't be happening).

But to say that there are no signs of opposition just goes to show that some people don't really know or understand the outer reaches of London at all.

Despite the lunacy of the LTNs I will be voting for Khan.

I don’t think he has been the best , he was almost silent during Covid, the bus drivers should have had immediate protection screens etc, and other issues.

But the other candidates are awful.

And Kahn cannot be blamed for central gvt cuts, and the central gvt measures that have impacted council tax / services on the outer London boroughs.

The Tories introduced ULEZ, OK, Kahn extended it but many tories would likely have done the same.

In the end London suffers when the leadership is of a different party to the gvt, and I can’t bring myself to believe that we have another 3 years of these tories.

I didn’t say there was no opposition, I said there were no signs of opposition in the area I know and drive through, which is SW London. If they are spray painting the cameras I haven’t seen it - I’d have thought there would be more banners and graffiti and stickers.

Khan will win. He's not so popular in outer boroughs but he will still get enough votes to keep him in. The only way a conservative will win the mayoral election is if they put up someone middle of the road. That's not Susan Hall!

Oh and pay for mile will come in eventually. It's just a matter of time. The ltns and ulez were just to get us acclimatised! More fool you if you fell for it.

Interesting that in 300-odd posts I haven't seen a single word of support for Susan Hall. (may have missed a few of course) Despite plenty of anti-Khan feeling.

Considering that there must be some Tory loyalists here, as anywhere, that's extraordinary.

Despite the lunacy of the LTNs I will be voting for Khan.

I do wonder whether LTNs will survive for much longer. The arguments made by bicycling councillors and Green Party loons to defend LTNs against angry residents are wearing very thin.

I know very little about her but she isn't impressive when I've seen her interviewed on TV. This incident suggests that she's some combination of extremely thick, obstinate and absolutely wedded to preconceived ideas in the face of overwhelming evidence that she's got it wrong. None of them ideal characteristics for a politician or any senior leader.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/good-samaritan-returned-susan-halls-stolen-wallet-thinks-she-dropped-it/

Do you honestLy believe that hopper fares, cycle provision and free school meals are Khan’s ideas? The unelected staff at City Hall do that and would do it anyway. All he does is rubber stamps the initiatives. He has no vision and no ideas.

If you like his style, you essentially wish to do away with the role of the Mayor of London altogether and have a London council instead.

Did you have any success finding evidence for LTNs being a bad thing?

Yes but I have zero idea how to post links....but the dft have found in the ten inner boroughs of London, total miles driven had increased...it's there if you google it. Also the Streatham ltn was scrapped. Why do you think that was? I'm not going to look at the surveys and studies done by green/cycling type organisations. For obvious reasons. And like an absolutely brilliant poster put earlier, just because you don't have a survey to prove it, doesn't mean you don't get wet in the shower. But regardless, depending on who is carrying out a survey, with a few clever tweeks, you can generally make them come out with the result you want.

And outside of the left wing, middle class, eco zealot bubble....they are utterly despised...which is certainly perplexing as you seem to think they've made everywhere better.

Was this the study you were reading?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213624X23001785

No.

Khan, without a doubt. I have no issue with ULEZ and think he's done a very good job in very difficult circumstances on many other matters. I like his anti-Brexit stance too, admire him for that.

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/08/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-generally-popular-report-ordered-by-sunak-finds

I know it’s the guardian but…

I imagine that most people like to drive their own cars but dislike the impact of other people’s cars.

It seems obvious that they are good for some people and not for others, and create problems if they divert rather than reduce traffic, particularly if you are just outside the zone.

Ironically, ‘15 minute cities’ seem to hark back to a halcyon time in the 50’s and 60’s.

The goal of better public transport, more local facilities seems pretty uncontroversial, so I think it’s a pity that town planning has become part of the culture wars.

Did you find a more recent one, perhaps you could share it?

Interesting findings in the study I linked to.

Streatham....there you go. Why do you think they removed that particular ltn?