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".

www.cityam.com/london-mayor-sadiq-khan-has-taken-axe-his-plan-plant-more/

Just Google a little. The Manifesto promises are still out there.

I'm just asking that you get some perspective and recognise that actually even the most remote reaches of Greater London get public transport that makes the rest of the country green with envy. Be glad for what you've got, because plenty of people aren't so lucky. If you think that things could be managed better (adjusting the timings so that connections work for example) then lobby your local councillors, or even stand for election yourself to make a difference.

Pretty sure you’re getting confused unless you can link me to his plan to plan ‘thousands of trees on Oxford street’. I can’t even imagine how that’s possible within the space there.

Khan had plans for a large scale tree planting initiative, this was not dropped. Currently over 430,000 trees have been funded by khan.

He did want to pedestrianise Oxford street, which would include trees as part of the urban planning although the trees were not the purpose, this wasn’t dropped so much as it was blocked by Westminster council.

I hope the Range Rover he gets chauffeured around in is compliant. Makes my blood boil.

I'm sure it will be as most (all?) new cars seem to be compliant. This is part of the problem, though: if it weren't, he could order a new replacement that is compliant and charge it to his expenses. I think that a lot of politicians genuinely don't realise (or don't care - you decide) that most people aren't in anything like that privileged position.

He would probably see it as doing his bit, by remembering to get his people to organise swapping the car over, and not have the faintest clue about the effect his proclamation will have on ordinary folk.

My 84 year old MIL lives barely half a mile inside Greater London. Only SIL and I live close enough to go and see her regularly, and I live 40 miles away.

I drive an old car, non-ULEZ compliant. If it's going to cost me £12.50 every time she's unwell or needs a hand with something, I won't be going very often. Public transport would involve a £12.50 return train ticket and a 6 mile bus ride, plus £13 in taxi fares to/from the station, and would take bloody ages.

It's bloody ridiculous to extend the ULEZ that far out. She's on the edge of open countryside and the air quality there is probably better than in my small town in Sussex.

She was very unwell last December, spent 3 days in intensive care, and for 2 weeks afterwards, either SIL or I were there to look after her. I wouldn't be able to afford to do that if it was going to cost me £12.50 a day. A week of that would cost half my pension in charges.

People cycle to and from stations.

I read sadiq Khan sometimes used a range rover for his own safety as he has had racist threats against him

I was just looking at a journey from Biggin Hill to Central London as that was the example provided. By all means provide another example.

Some people are reliant upon Avanti or TPE for their commute. They have the right to whinge. Likewise anyone trying to get to Birmingham when TfW (yet again) diagram a two car unit.

A senior Department for Transport civil servant wondered what all the fuss was about these "Pacer" trains he'd heard about on the news. The then MD of Northern invited him to take a peak time journey from Liverpool to Manchester (via Warrington Central). The bloke was a gibbering wreck by the time that he arrived in Oxford Road. But then as he worked in Whitehall he was used to getting on a twelve coach electric train of less than 20 years old, not one of the worst products of 1980s cuts - a British Leyland bus body on a freight wagon underframe. He clearly needed to get out of the London bubble more and see what life was like for the people outside of it.

I read sadiq Khan sometimes used a range rover for his own safety as he has had racist threats against him

I'm genuinely sorry that he's experienced this; but he's not the only person in London who is vulnerable to crime and attacks.

Has he even considered the number of women who will now have to walk through dark streets and use public transport with whichever threatening/dangerous undesirables also decide to get on, because he's priced them out of the personal safety of being able to use their own car?

MiL is a senior citizen and her car is old. She can't afford a new one so she'll probably have to give up driving. She's got age-related mobility problems but isn't registered disabled so it will be a blow to her independence. She and FiL live in Zone1/2 borders.

So much ignorance. For decades now there has been zero investment in developing new tube lines into South London. Bakerloo extension scrapped twice! Yet North of the river get a new Cross rail so people further eat and west who already have tube lines can get into London 20 mins quicker.

Where I live we used to be part of Kent but then became a greater London Borough now paying bloody gla taxes and for what? Zero investment in improving public transport and providing similiar services that rest of London have.

Id rather go back to being part of Kent thanks and stop paying gla taxes if we are going to be ignored like this.

Read and weep, sweet summer child.

sadiq.london/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Sadiq-for-London-Manifesto-.pdf

Are you working for him?

Because you are the only one sticking ip for him on this thread.

We built this buffet - so you're claiming driving is good for women because its safer?! People in cities generally don't drive home after a night out

Chardonnay, I don't work for him either

The man is a cunt.

I live in a very well-to-do town just outside the M25. I feel like I've done my bit by keeping my modest petrol car running in great condition for 21+ years and only using it for limited, necessary journeys (walk and bike outside of that).
I thought I was doing the responsible thing.

Conversely the driveways throughout town are packed with multiple new vehicles aka status symbols - company cars or lease vehicles and have been for 10-15 years. I appreciate some of these may be environmentally friendlier in terms of emissions but what is the cost of producing them and replacing them every other year, just to have the lastest model? Presumably scrapping them at some point in their abbreviated lifespan? Creating a demand for more vehicles than anyone reasonably needs? The environmental cost of producing batteries for electric cars that have a limited lifespan? Mining for precious metals for said batteries?

The streets are full of cars at school pick up time, very few primary kids seem to be walked to school. We have a primary school at one end of the road and parents arrive extremely early and sit in their cars on their phones, or hang about chatting once they've dropped the kids off. Not an example of having to hurriedly drop kids and drive onwards to work.

Fortunately the ULEZ won't affect me much and I expect to have to replace my car at some point (!) but as previous posters have said I feel the timing of this is wrong.

Good for you.

Plenty of people on this thread are in favour of the extended ULEZ, if you can’t see that you are completely blinded by your own insular view.

I acknowledged some people are against ULEZ and LTNs but the they are a net positive to society based on the data.

Personally I am all for anything that improves air quality in the city, particularly when some of the people against it are complaining their 20 minute drive to the gym is now taking too long with traffic measures, when they could literally walk faster than they anyway.

Chardonnay - 'good for you'? Are you 12?

No, I'm old enough to remember Khan's broken promises and to see what he's turned London into.

Chardonnay - and what has he turned it into?

Ah, I hoped you'd ask that.

A rat run for white vans and builders' lorries and a developers paradise.

We built this buffet - so you're claiming driving is good for women because its safer?! People in cities generally don't drive home after a night out

Plenty women are out and about late for reasons other than a night out . A young relative of mine is a nurse working shifts. I doubt her old car is compliant and I'm sure she won't be able to afford to replace it. Or pay an extra £12.50 a day to use it.

Shouldn’t you be in favour of ULEZ being extended then? 🤣