To wonder what all the fuss is about ULEZ

[Winterday1991]

Hardly anyone is affected, only if you have a very old car. No, you should not be free to pollute the air by driving around in a polluting vehicle and so should have to pay a penalty to do so.

It annoys me as everyone agrees we need to tackle climate change, but no one wants the hit on their life/ change their lifestyles.

@Hufflepods, yes, but you can bet your life that the price of 2nd hand compliant cars is going to soar - if it hasn’t already.

So, we're currently car shopping.

To get a family sized car (so, not a small hatchback, one with decent, but not massive, boot space and able to fit 3 across the back seat without too much trouble), it isn't easy to find anything under £10k.

One model I have been looking at - £20 - £26k for 3 or 4 year old cars with over £60k on the clock. Where as brand new these are around £32k. The prices are 2nd hand cars is insane.

Oh look, it's another thread where someone living in London has zero understanding of what public transport looks like for the rest of the UK.

Maybe thats because ULEZ is for people LIVING IN LONDON.

@Winterday1991 you are very much focussed on your situation in London. ULEZ is also being introduced into towns and cities around the rest of the UK where public transport isn’t anywhere near as good or effective. Commuters into city centres are also being hit (wfh not an option!). 2015 cars are not that old!! Effectively scrapping fully functional <10 year old cars because they are not ULEZ compliant and having to buy newer/petrol is not exactly environmentally friendly…!

Thats very dismissive of you. Yes, I get a bus pass but its no use if there aren't buses to use. I live in the middle of Edinburgh yet I can't get a bus from my estate into town, I guess because its an estate and tourists are catered for rather than residents. I bought a car specifically because I can't manage on public transport only to find out that despite having 0 emissions it isn't compliant.

It isn't very old cars though. I had a 2014 diesel Ford kuga with less than 70000 miles on it that didn't meet the requirements.

OP, you are right that numbers are small. I think a larger scrappage scheme is the best way forward.

I would prefer a national scheme as people in Slough for example deserve clean air just as much as in Hayes, for example. That is not going to happen though.

um no the greenest thing to do would be to get rid of your car altogether!
we need less cars not replacing them with newer ones.
but agree that often keeping hold of an older vehicle makes sense

@Reugny in Glasgow the ULEZ is £30 a day ( £60 if you don't pay in 14 days) and their cutoff for diesels is September 2015 everything before that is diesel 5b but they want 6 so my car is low emissions but still doesn't qualify I appreciate in London it maybe different

The cost to change is huge, in part because the value of your car has plummeted due to it not being compliant.
there was a zafira I saw on a forecourt last week, it would have been £800-£1500 18 months ago, it wouldn’t have been on a nice forecourt either, but a back street garage. It was up for £4995.

it is madness.

It is NOT old cars. It is madness

It’s the suburbs.
some have great joined up transport. Others it’s terrible.

Banning cruise ships belching out fumes and banning wood burning stoves would achieve better air quality results.

I stand corrected, reading that ULEZ is being implemented elsewhere!

Will get off my soapbox and shut up!

The result in Uxbridge is a massive wake-up call for Labour. And also for the Lib Dems & Greens.

The lesson is that ordinary people with ordinary jobs who depend on their cars to get to work & get their kids to school will not vote for policies which clobber them even harder during a cost of living crisis. No matter how many virtue-signalling middle class activists try to guilt-trip them into doing so.

Cruise ships rarely affect air quality in towns/cities/suburbs.

And that’s part of it. What logic is there in scrapping or writing off cars and vans made in 2014/2015.

there will be compliant cars emitting higher co2 than most of those.
it makes no sense.

Most of them dodge tax, take on multiple jobs at a time. I have NEVER met a poor tradesman. They earn a fortune considering most of them come from very working class backgrounds

@Winterday1991 nothing worse than a working class tradesman is there, especially when he is clearing your drains or fixing your electricity, so tedious.

Especially as apparently most cars are already ULEZ compliant ? The harm to the environment is surely less from these very few non compliant vehicles still running than disposal etc ? It’s clearly a money making scheme and will impact some people in such a way that they can’t afford to leave their house ? So a tax on the freedom of the poor, elderly or disabled

I agree. The fact there’s no real exemption scheme aside from tax class is hugely unfair - if there was a system where anyone who is disabled or a low income was exempt then maybe it could work but it’s £12.50 a day regardless, that’s not ok

This.

We have to drive to get to our local station, although it's a half an hour walk a proportion of that is on fast roads with no pavement. It's not safe. The alternative is to wait for a bus which comes every twenty minutes.

I've lived and worked in central London, and having no car is definitely more convenient there; it won't impact people as much. It doesn't work if you're on the serious outskirts. My road is not part of the incoming ULEZ but the two roads it turns into are, so we're having to replace our car which is 13 years old and about to break 100k miles (a diesel, which we bought because we were told it was much better for the environment than petrol was at the time) - and we're not eligible for any of the scrappage schemes.

A few years ago, some environmental group or other did an analysis on this very point, and found that when you do a cradle-to-grave analysis of the environmental impact of producing a new car, the least damaging thing to do was to run old cars. I've also read something similar about electric cars, because of the impact of mining the lithium and disposing of old batteries.

However, I realise that that's a different kettle of fish from improving air quality in urban centres and reducing the adverse health impacts of local air pollution.

The “fuss” about the ULEZ extension is:

1. London’s most polluted areas are not the roads, but the Underground, so if you use the Tube regularly, clean air “up top” may be cold comfort to your health
2. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the money from the Congestion and ULEZ charges is being used to E.g. plant more trees (which would greatly help to clean the air) or improve air quality by additional means
3. It forces those who can afford it to buy compliant cars, getting rid of their old ones that have done less than 125,000 miles (the mileage at which the ecological cost of production is nullified) - so a waste of finite resources in itself
4. By purchasing EV’s, you’ll still have to drive these for over 125,000 miles before they start to become ecologically viable, and they’re twice as heavy as regular ICE cars, so cause far more damage than these, both to roads, by causing potholes and in the atmosphere, and by emitting more tyre particles Etc. (The next health scare to be appropriated by TFL, no doubt)
5. Alternatives to ICE cars have only really been explored in the main context of EV’s and Hybrid traditional ‘car’ vehicles: legalising electric scooters (stand-up kind, not moto-kind) and providing tracks for these, then outlawing cars for journeys of, say, < 2 miles (with < 2 people sharing) would remove a huge chunk of vehicles from the roads
6. Expansion of cycle lanes separated from traffic would allow more people to ditch the car and get on their push-pedal or eBikes more safely, and be a lot safer, but we don’t see any interest in doing this
7. The cost of public transport is too high: getting people to favour this involves making it cheaper and also, (as stated in point 1.)They really need to clean up the Underground, too!

So you see, we aren’t just objecting because of the costs, but because by only charging motorists, then not using that cash to provide a sustainable solution for the future, it merely looks like a cynical and punitive money-grab (especially after persuading many people to buy Diesel cars over Petrol ones), and not an honourable attempt to reduce emissions.

It's horrific how many people seem to think it's acceptable to drive in the centre of London. I've lived here all my life and the only other Londoners I know who drive are either people who use the vehicle sparingly for their trade, or disabled people, or local taxi drivers. We all live here, have families here and understand the danger and other negative effects of cars on people's lives.

I and many of my neighbours have asthma and other lung conditions. Life expectancy and quality of life are affected by people driving here. And people die from air pollution.

Obviously there should be government assistance and support for people who actually need cars to obtain low-emissions vehicles and there always should be better public transport (though there's no need to drive anywhere in zones 1 and 2: it's actually quicker and easier to walk anyway). But this doesn't mean it's ok to pretend it's reasonable or morally acceptable to drive here.