Londoner? ULEZ expansion - wrong time?

[GrubzUp]

I like Sadiq Khan, in general I applaud green initiatives.

However it's been announced today that the original inner London low emission zone is to be expanded into outer London - meaning that if you have an older, more polluting vehicle it will cost you £12.50 every time you drive it anywhere in London (inside the M25 I think).

I live in outer London. There are a LOT of older, non ULEZ compliant vehicles on the road round here. At the moment, people don't need to be compliant for local trips, because unless they're heading inside the North / South Circular Rd, they are fine in their older cars.

I look out in the street and see my neighbours' cars: the people who tend to drive older vehicles are the young, the old, the disabled and the poor.

AIBU to say that hitting them with a big new tax for driving anywhere in the middle of a cost of living crisis is the WRONG time? If they can't afford a newer model they certainly can't afford to pay £12 every time they take it off the drive. I feel bad for these people. How are they going to afford it?

Note that public transport here is not what it is in inner London, you can't just "jump on the tube".

People like me have been changing our routes for a while. One route I used to go I know go slightly further round the A406. Another place I used to drop my son 3 miles away, I now drop him at the tube 1.5 miles away (I’m not letting him walk it at 6:30am alone, and I don’t have time…). That tube station is now amazingly rammed with traffic.
Other times I can skirt the zone, just by changing the route a little. It’s like the nearest non LEZ road to me, a wall of lorries you don’t see elsewhere in the area. People drive further or other routes to avoid paying.

@thehorsehasnowbolted Soon we will be unable to travel beyond the distance we can reach on foot, and we will be unable to go very far due to severe undernourishment

Careful, your tinfoil hat is getting a bit loose.

The thing is, it won't stop the traffic and pollution. Everyone still needs to get to where they are going and the public transport infrastructure isn't the same as central London in these places. Do really, it is just a money making scheme.

Having everything you need within 20 mins of your home, which is an idea some cities in the world are implementing, does indeed mean you can walk and cycle every where. Encouraging people to use less polluting modes of transport is a good thing for millions of people who live in cities and Running a car is expensive.

Ruby - don't give them your money then

We live in the current ulez and dh had to buy a new car last year! He has to drive for his job so no way around it. Mine was compliant even though it’s older with higher road tax. He sold his old one to someone out of London - he was def out of pocket but we can afford it.
i think it’s pretty harsh in those who can’t afford new vehicles to put it in next year while there’s a COL crisis going in.

does indeed mean you can walk and cycle

Not everyone can walk and cycle as someone already mentioned upthread. What about the elderly, the disabled? What if you are carrying stuff?

Having everything you need within 20 mins of your home, which is an idea some cities in the world are implementing

Which cities are implementing this demented idea? What constitutes 'everything you need' exactly? Some people need to or enjoy travelling. Or should we be confined to our own villages like people did 200 years ago?

I don't need to. My car is compliant.

Of course it will reduce traffic! Have you even looked into the days? The majority of car journeys in London are walkable or often quicker by public transport. That is the whole point. The city is being polluted unnecessarily due to laziness. Someone on this very thread was outraged it now took longer than 20 mins for her to drive 1 mile to her gym when you can literally walk that door to door in the same or less time.
Most people are able bodied, most areas in the ULEZ zones have good access to public transport.

Or should we be confined to our own villages like people did 200 years ago?

Can we horse ride or is it also off bounds due to the greens and animal cruelty? Geez!!!!

The horse, it was the invention of the good old bicycles that got people out of their villages in the first place. Also trains go all over the country. Free up our roads for the people who really need to use them, including the elderly and less able. Although buses in london are well used by both.

There are many like me who used to drive into London especially for nights out because there is no public transport home after 11.30 which is last train. But once I get a compliant car I'll be back to going out to those places I've had to stop going to.

So I think you'll find that it won't lessen the number of cars on the road.

And no I won't spend £40 on a taxi to get home when the fuel to drive home myself is significantly less.

We're talking about greater London though, not central London. Zones 4 and 5 don't always have the best transport links. The South East in particular isn't very well connected to other parts of London.

Spectre8 - was your car free then and is it free to run? Also, there are night buses

Every single person will change their car to a new compliant one and make the exact same number of journeys, even though that is at complete odds with the actual impact of the congestion zone had and the original ULEZ? okay sure 👍
Feel free to check back on the data after a year or two.

@Ruby0707
We're talking about greater London though, not central London. Zones 4 and 5 don't always have the best transport links. The South East in particular isn't very well connected to other parts of London.

But every single area in zone 4 and 5 aren’t all poorly connected. Many have tube access, national rail stations and an amazing bus network compared to any other suburban area in the country. Just because you won’t change your behaviour doesn’t mean no one will.
The original ULEZ zone is hardly central London.

I'm just pointing out the doffculti

I'm just pointing out the difficulties some will have. I'm not referring to myself.

Have a lovely day.

I agree with @GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat. If we were serious about the climate we'd be looking at all the emissions in car production, not just arbitrary standards that are encouraging more purchasing of (inevitably) much larger, bulkier cars. And frankly, that encourage car manufacturers to lie ("Dieselgate" broke just after I last changed car, in 2015).

The wear and tear on the roads from all these heavy Evoques, Discoveries and vans is an issue too, even if their emissions are compliant.

You would be crazy to cycle round here unless you are very fit and confident and cycle defensively with a helmet cam etc. Driver behaviour is aggressive, impatient and careless and it has noticeably worsened over the last 10 years.

I’m in favour. I live just outside the current ULEZ and am happy they are extending it and we won’t have polluting vehicles poisoning the air any more. I’m tired of my children constantly having coughs and asthma. The girl who died of asthma due to pollution lived not far from here and it’s definitely a worry for me.

We had to replace our car a few years ago and we deliberately didn’t get diesel - even though it would have been cheaper - because we knew there were issues with diesel and pollution (it wasn’t difficult to find information on this) and I didn’t want to have to replace it again a few years later if a ULEZ got introduced where we live.

The original ULEZ was planned in 2014 (by Boris Johnson) and announced in 2017 by Sadiq Khan so it’s been around a good while, I don’t know why everyone is so shocked. It was obvious to me that if it was a success it would be extended out, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. I think if you bought a non-compliant diesel car after that date then you were taking a gamble.

So many of these policies seem to be based on people changing cars every couple of years. I'm not sure it's responsible to do that. The old vehicles have all got to go somewhere. Could we not encourage retrofitting?

Eight years for diesel and eighteen years for petrol isn't "a couple" to be fair.

It’s not quicker to go by public transport where I am in London. To get to work takes 20-30 mins by car but to take public transport I would have to give myself 1.5 hours after all the connections. I’m not coming home after 12 hour shifts at 9:30-10pm on public transport that takes that long. There has also been recent stabbings at local bus and tube stations as well, I don’t feel safe.
the problem is outer London is so vastly different to inner London. We have farms and woods on our doorstep it’s not the busy , connected, everything in your doorstep everyone seems to think it is.

We live in one of the outer London areas that’s going to be included. My car will be fine, dh’s won’t, but he mostly uses mine anyway - his bigger one is largely reserved for long journeys. We do have very good public transport here, but of course that’s not going to help anyone disabled, or too wobbly to use buses.

At least it’s going to cure dh of taking my car for the very short trip into town just for a couple of things, when there’s a bus we hardly ever have to wait more than about 5 minutes for. And no faff with parking, or having to pay for it.