To think this is ridiculous and will mostly affect the poor of London?

[mothertruck3r]

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/new-emissions-zone-to-hit-drivers-with-1250-a-day-pollution-tax-a3858531.html

I understand he wants to reduce pollution but how is this going to help the hundreds of thousands of poor people who can't afford to buy a new car, pay the fee (£12.50 per day!) or pay the fine, especially after people were encouraged to buy diesel cars?

Great if you are rich and can easily buy a new car but there are loads of poor people in London who can't do this and rely on their old car for their jobs, taking kids to school, disabled getting about etc.

It's not very well thought through. I thought Labour was supposed to be the party to help the poor. Seems all this will do is help boost new car sales for big manufacturers whilst screwing a huge part of the electorate that voted for him !

The number of genuinely poor people living in the affected area who run cars is tiny. Taxi once a month for journeys where you absolutely need it is much much cheaper.

Very few people need a car in London and no one should be driving their children to school there. Air quality is a massive issue with implications for everyone's health.

I am so tired of seeing posts on MN saying London isn't a place for poor people to live - if you think there aren't hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of poor people living here in the capital, you need to educate yourself. There is social housing in all boroughs, and a great deal of (often very substandard) private rental property.

Most taxes disproportionately affect poorer people, including duty on tobacco and alcohol, and this proposal will too. Doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't happen - air quality in many areas is awful.

nordic- well children travel for free on public transport in london, so the cost of getting them to school via it is nothing.

What i don't get about the congestion charge is why do residents get such a big discount?
Most people payibg the congestion chatge are people who don't even live in london.

I feel sorry for people paying it but then I'm afraid the enviroment and future of the huma race is kinda more important

So ban all cars in London.They all have an environmental impact.

With everyone seemingly claiming public transport is perfectly useable in every situation then why don’t we just ban cars in London? Fine by me. I'm rich, live in London and have never owned a car. I walk, cycle, take public transport, get the occasional taxi and belong to a car club that I use roughly once a year.

The rich are already paying the congestion charge. They won’t be paying new charges on filthy cars unless they drive filthy cars. It’s not done by age or price, it’s done by emissions - plenty of very cheap ten year old petrol cars aren’t hit and plenty of relatively new and expensive Diesels are.

I agree that the exemption on classic cars is a nonsense though - if you want to drive one then you should have to pay up - if you don’t want to do that then you could flog it to someone who lives in rural Northumbria.

Living in London sounds horrendous...why do people do it!
because it doesn't have to be horrendous. Public transport at peak time is grim, but apart from that, you have access to pretty much everything in London. Even with young kids, there's no boring time, endless free activities to take them on Sundays.
It's a cosmopolite city, you meet people, make friends easily, but you are also gloriously anonymous and fee free. I love London.

@N0rdicStar

I dread to think how workable and expensive getting 2 primary kids to school and 2 adults to work on time via public transport every morning would be.😱

Most London children live in a walking distance to their primary school. So you know, you just walk them there.
Children under 11 travel for free on all services, older get a child rate for tube and trains but still travel for free using buses and trams.

I am so tired of seeing posts on MN saying London isn't a place for poor people to live

Couldn't agree more. I don't think people realise either that all social housing are not Tower block with the nightmarish history we know of. Some social housing are in the most expensive areas, where only really rich people could afford to live! Not a bad environment when you are surrounded by million-pounds properties. Some people are very lucky!

Old cars (sometimes termed classic cars, but actually anything that's still on the road >50 years) are already exempt from tax.

I'm in London with no car by choice. Having/not having a car isn't particularly closely related to income in London, and hasn't been for quite a while. Those who live centrally have ever lower car ownership year on year anyhow. The nudge to greener vehicles has been gong on for a while (congestion charge). I think this is a good policy - air quality is absolutely shocking and is causing excess deaths.

I was also wondering if people on this thread who object to it also realised that it will expand enormously (everything inside north and south circulars) in 2021? 2019 version is congestion charge area only.

And that all petrol and diesel cars and vans will be phased out (following plans/models of other European countries) and no longer on sale from 2040

So perhaps getting an older car (whether classic or not) with basic (non computerised) easily fixable engines which could last forever, might be something preppers should be doing now

@Gogreen - yes some of us are born and bred here and have elderly parents that need looking after, and many friends and family here. Sadly London is becoming pretty shit in many ways, but some of us can't or don't want to leave.

I just wish all the super rich investors in empty buildings would fuck off, and the govt would do something radical like make those mansions into social housing. I'm not holding my breath though!

Where the hell do you live N0rdic? Because that’s absolutely the norm for the vast majority of inner Londoners, although with catchment areas being what they are, “public transport” for the DC normally means Shanks’ pony. And even if you do need to take a bus to school, for people who commute 5 days a week, commuting plus a school run for 2 adults and 2 children costs the same as the adults’ commute: i.e. 2 season tickets.

My children used to walk to primary school and walk/get the bus to senior school. We use public transport to get to work. Within the ULEZ, most people use public transport for commuting and most (not all of course) people live within walking distance of primary schools. I walk to the doctor (or I could get a bus if I couldn't walk 20 minutes); I do drive to the dentist but that is only twice a year, so I would get a train if I didn't have a car. My shopping is delivered and I top up shop at the local Sainsbury's. Lucky for me, I know.

But seriously one of the things that needs to happen is for all of us to start to think about organising our lives so we drive less. It's not as easy for all of us, and there are always going to be exceptions, but it's time for a drastic rethink in general, and I guess a big city is the easiest place to start. As someone upthread has pointed out, the majority of people in London don't own a car anyway.

These two graphs show why the “this will hit the poor” narrative is false. You only get hit if you have a car (of the affected type).
Poor people are far less likely to have access to a car. People living in the inner boroughs are far less likely to have a car. By the time you combine the two, the affected population of poor inner borough car owners is very small. By contrast the population of poor inner borough asthma sufferers is disproportionately large. These are the people who are dying in their thousands as a result of current pollution levels.

My street is almost impassable because there are cars parked down both sides of the road, most of which never move - our neighbours literally use theirs once or twice a fortnight. They just sit there depreciating and being an eyesore.

A friend once worked out that she could get a black cab to and from work every day and it would still be cheaper than running a car in London.

I'd prefer to see a ban on massive cars that are not necessary - they use way too much fuel and are dangerous to other drivers and pedestrians. Being dazzled by the headlights of a large car coming towards you is a daily occurrence at this time of year even if they are dipped because some large cars have headlights at eye level for drivers of ordinary sized cars.

I have a small, cheap 2009 car and it meets the standard. If it only affects London then there will still be a market for cars that don't meet the standard, people can trade in for another used car that does meet it. Introducing this fee is something that simply needed to be done.

I used to live in Zone 2 and noticed that a lot of people still used cars for journeys that were just a little bit inconvenient by public transport.

A friend living close to me had a pt job that would have involved 2 or 3 stops down to change onto the Circle line, a couple of stops along and then a short walk. But she preferred to drive and park on a meter in Zone 1/2 because it was door-to-door and more comfortable.

I am not pointing the finger at that friend (she was a lovely person) but until that kind of journey becomes massively dis-incentivised, then the problem will remain.

A national congestion charge around schools would wake people up too.
I will be kind but at least 50& of parents driving badly their kids to school live close enough and are just lazy. Yes, there are a few rural exceptions with dangerous zones, but the majority of schools, with very strict catchment areas on top of everything, seem to attract the worst examples.

I should suggest for the government to have a look into it. If you could charge parents and bring the money directly to the schools, everybody would be winning. The kids who don't have to walk through car fumes and dangerous drivers would be the ultimate winners!

So Londoners have free public transport for their dc, schools of their choosing and walkable to and great public transport that gets a family of 4 to work and school on time and affordable even when parents have to do the school run first.

No we don’t have that elsewhere. Anybody else thinking the over investment in London is a tad unfair?

So Londoners have free public transport for their dc, schools of their choosing and walkable to and great public transport that gets a family of 4 to work and school on time and affordable even when parents have to do the school run first.
No we don’t have that elsewhere. Anybody else thinking the over investment in London is a tad unfair?

You're free to move to London and contribute to the economy that earns this "over investment" and then some more.

Like the maj we couldn't afford to live in a London shed and aren't eligible for social housing. London benefits London,not the rest of the country.

Why not tax the zillion Uber taxis? Where we are every other vehicle on the road is a bloody Uber, blocking’s up the resident parking spaces, sitting with their engines idling or clogging up the roads.