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".

Just to add to previous post - 2 trains an hour may be high for some areas but these areas in the border do not have the transport links you may expect when you say 'London'

There should be a national scheme, and a scrappage scheme for older cars, at least small ones.

The charge should be much higher for Chelsea Tractors.

Poor air quality does not just harm younger children and many adults in Greater London.

Ltns are making much of London unbearable. I am so fed up of all this. Electric cars will soon be the norm anyway.

I live outside the current zone but will be in the new one. We have all known this was coming for years. We factored it into the car we bought four years ago.

Of course, how could it not when air pollution has now been proved to cause them?

Removing this as a factor will save some of the mortality and morbidity. Air quality has demonstrably improved within the current ULEZ zone, so there’s every reason to presume the outer zone will see similar benefits.

Of course, I agree that we need to go further than this on air quality, but it’s a good step in the right direction.

It has been
I was against the congestion charge too
but this is what happens when they are happy to have overpopulation but want green stuff.

it's a money making exercise too.

I say this as someone who doesn't even own a car in London. It's appalling and will be replicated across the country.

The carer for my neighbour two doors up rides an E scooter. It's impressive she's really good on it!

We're in an LTN as well and all the drivers are moaning as loudly as you'd expect (mainly rich older white men), but the council who put them in got re elected by an overwhelming majority. Even some of the drivers admit it's an improvement. Most people in my borough can't afford cars and were sick of rich people polluting with their gas guzzlers. Fucking walk mate. (Disabled drivers are exempt from LTNs)

The air pollution is so bad in London it has to be done. To be fair, this has been known about for quite some time.

Inside the M25? Do Reigate&Banstead BC and Surrey CC know about this? It will probably be 'London' one day, in many ways it now is, but not yet.

@breadandwatered is that one of the e scooters that are currently illegal to ride on public roads?

So if you have a non compliant car you get charged to just go down the road to the supermarket? And what happens when there are bus strikes? Mad scheme, just to fill the deficit from covid. Why does he get to decide this? I think a few legal challenges are on the way.

I think R&B will be just outside. Border is about at the start of the mad mile I think.

Well that’s the 64,000 dollar question. I’m in favour of generous scrappage schemes. That said, it’s been known for many years now that diesel is a major menace to health. I bought my car in 2015 and was conscious of the need to avoid diesel then. And it wasn’t new information at the time. We’ve all known diesel is a problem for a lot of years now, so people really should have been moving away from it where possible. It’s harder for the less well -off, which is why they should be helped.

It also needs to be recognised that the less well-off also suffer the worst quality air and it’s negative effects, eg children in Tower Hamlets have lungs that have 10% less volume than the national average.

So NOT doing this is actually an issue of inequality, where we say ‘fuck it, the poor can just breathe toxic air and suffer and die in greater numbers, because I don’t want to fork out more to buy or lease a cleaner vehicle’.

The poorer among us may find it more difficult to replace their car or switch to other cleaner transport. But the poorer among us also suffer the most from toxic air. Don’t they deserve to have their health protected?

Some areas of outer London are very rural. We stopped at Havering atte Bower, which has one bus every 90 minutes, and still in Greater London.
Biggin Hill in the South is also very rural.
We should be OK, as our car is not very old, but I am thinking of builders vans, and others.

Hahahaha

I’m devastated at this announcement. I live in outer London. The bus doesn’t start early enough for me to get to work on Saturday and Sundays. I work as a nurse I really don’t know what we are going to do. Work also lets me come in half and hour late on days OH can’t drop the kids, so I can drop kids at breakfast club. If I didn’t have the car I couldn’t make it to work on time. Breakfast club won’t start any earlier so I can’t leave earlier.
I don’t know what the answer is but I feel like this is such a kick in the teeth and will seriously look at leaving the UK (I’m not British but OH is as are the kids) it’s becoming impossible to live here and have a decent standard of living.

Anyway the changing of the current one is hot and miss, consider the automated payments, you probably won’t pay every day, that’s even less likely if you never cross into the zone but live inside.

For those saying it has been known about for some time - there has been talk of extending it - but the extension was subject to a consultation process. The entire point of an open and fair consultation is that the process doesn't presuppose the outcome. Who can afford to make changes costing thousands of pounds on an outcome that might not come to pass.

The scrappage scheme from what I can see only applies if you are on benefits. We are not receiving any of the qualifying benefits, but can't take a hit of ££££ either.

Some of the attempts at green schemes/LTNs and cycle lanes near me have been rushed out and poorly designed - to the point they were hampering emergency vehicle progress (we are on a main route to a major hospital) and some of them have had to be revised post instalation.

I haven't seen any suggestion the funds from this are going to be ringfenced for green projects. Unfortunately it does seem like City Hall is just trying to plug some finances.

The negative effects on health - including thousands of excess deaths per year - are unarguable. I don’t care if people want to call it a tax, I’m just glad something’s being done about it.

I like Sadiq Khan, in general I applaud green initiatives

This is your first mistake! I wouldn’t trust the fucker as far as I could throw him.

Air pollution in London has been reduced by something like 98% since the 1970s, it’s not exact fragrant but in reality it’s probably never been cleaner since records began - check the stats.

Whoever said this has nothing to do with health and well being, and all about raising revenue is bang on the money.

And yes, it will penalise the poorest the most, and benefit the well off, like most of these so-called green initiatives.

Has a proper cost benefit analysis been done? I bet it hasn’t. It’s all based on a coroner’s finding in one tragic case, but numpties like Kahn just swallow all this stuff because they think it makes them look good.

Political virtue signalling, the only thing the useless twat is good at.

There hasn't been a challenge to its original implementation or the expansion last year to the north/south circular so there's no reason to expect that it could be challenged when it's expanded again.

I'm broadly in favour, but the recent rise in price of second hand cars does make it more difficult: you used to be able to pick up a decent small ten year old petrol car for peanuts, so affordable for most car owners with a few years notice, but it's much more expensive to buy a reliable old car nowadays.

Yes me too.

I don't think there is ever a good time to roll something like this out. My main issue is that they aren't investing in public transport. I would love to get the train to work, or even a bus. But public transport has been cutback to the bare bones here and is ridiculously expensive.

Yep! Maybe people should read this story...

londonnewsonline.co.uk/landmark-inquest-concludes-death-of-lewisham-nine-year-old-was-caused-by-air-pollution/

If it means one less child dies I'm for it!

Whilst I agree about the health benefits, just remebee that tfl and the London mayor has never invested much in dwvleoponf public transport in the south. Bakerloo line extension which id benefit from scrapped! Yet nortg of the river gets a new Crossrail... why when there are so many tube lines all the shave off 20mins of ppls journeys. Neglecting the south time and time again

This Is what angers me.

Oh and just wait their are already talks happening to introduce road user charging as in pay per mile and it will happen too.

There are many of us like me who don't get benefits but don't earn enough and on their own and won't get any help on the scheme. If this had been introduced pre covid I'd have had a chance of buying a car but prices have gone up so much and by the time I have enough money it'll go up more now as other ppl buy

I've had to tell my parents that they need to prepare themselves that I won't be able to come care for them anymore