ULEZ

[titbumwillypoo]

Simple solution to all the people moaning about the ULEZ charge. In order to be exempt all you have to do is drive your car into a shipping container, close the doors and run your engine for one hour. If as you say your car isn't that bad you should be fine, as the fumes you pump out on pedestrians should be good enough for you to breathe for an hour?
AIBU- Don't be ridiculous that would kill off loads of drivers who only have access to the most integrated transport system in the country.
YANBU - Sounds like a plan! 😂

Yes! I was looking at one of my children’s clubs, it’s a 12 minute drive. It’s 50 minutes by bus. Delays it’ll hit well over an hour, they often miss out buses. I’ve had to say they can’t go.I can’t spend 2 hours on buses for a one hour activity

London also pays a disproportionate chunk of the tax that subsidises the rest of the country, because government has over invested in London for the last 40 years whilst simultaneously dismantling the industries that made this country a world leader without replacing them.
Go figure.

I don't disagree but why is this the fault of lower income Londoners doing jobs like caring, delivery, construction (or retired), driving older cars, living on the edge of the zone? It's not is it?! They're hardly the ones benefiting from the financial services industry are they?

We have been saving to replace our 70 year old bathroom, and also were given a small amount by a family member in order to "create a memory with our children". Ha. Now buying a ULEZ compliant car instead. My sons hobby isn't possible using public transport at all, and having spent £25 a week on ULEZ thus far, once we're in the zone next week, we just can't carry on like that. So a perfectly good, low emissions but diesel car will now be scrapped. Which seems utter nonsense.

I would be happy to take the train to visit family in London but even with paying this charge (and with a railcard) it's far far higher than I can justify. I did it once as a luxury / treat. Certainly can't afford to do it often.

Also our car will most likely be scrapped if we change it. That's not great for the environment either.

So I'll pay the charge on the handful of occasions we go.

I'm not scrapping/selling my small diesel car just yet because I've done the numbers and with ULEZ (making minimal journeys, mostly to get my primary age child to and from school and holiday care - no direct bus) it adds around £2k a year. There is no way I can get a new car, especially an electric, for anything like that amount (it would be nearer £5k on a lease arrangement) and I'm not willing to risk a second hand purchase again because of the speed at which legislation is changing.

So TfL can spend my £2k on improving air quality (minus admin) but let's face it, my outer London local authority could do that anyway, especially if they weren't facing a bunch of extra costs from ULEZ!

It is mostly about improving TfL's financial position but it does make them look good too.

A good friend has had to scrap her perfectly good car because it was just too old to be exempt. It was low mileage and been expensively maintained from new. What a waste! She can't afford to buy a clean reliable car and won't risk a high mileage banger that is just ULEZ compliant.

Now to visit her parents she has a long walk to the bus stop and wait for a bus into the local town, get a train and then another bus. Then the same on the way home. It's just ridiculous.

Ironically my bloody car is compliant but ULEZ are currently refusing to accept that it is.

Unfortunately you can't get welders, gates, metal, ladders etc on public transport neither do we have the money to replace our van with a compliant one which has gone up in price astronomically even with the enhanced scheme the price has risen more than that and in the few years to retirement no way would it be feasible as we would be paying off a loan after retiring so business closing and 4 out of work.
I'm a cm and had to replace a 7 seater car I've had to accept either one a year newer than my old car and nearly £400 more than I paid for the original well maintained one or one that means I had to borrow over £9000 we spent months looking for a car and travelled miles everything was either a non claimed for accident car, wrecked engines or so badly looked after it was rediculous....so now my families are having to pay me more to cover the loan I never needed for me....and as scrappage requires you to have valid insurance...which I had changed to my new car I've had to buy insurance for a car that is off road and will be taken for scrap on a lorry....and they may say it's invalid as only just brought the insurance. ....if there's any money left in the pot.

I have family near Leeds whenever I go I'm hit by the amount of new clothes and disposable income I see in town I guess because they don't pay anything like the amount we do for housing.

Well, ULEZ starts today and on a local FB group confusion and upset abound. They are talking about an area that is next to the ULEZ boundary, and not the most well off population. Whatever the lofty aims of ULEZ we shouldn't kid ourselves that only 5%-10% of cars are non-compliant in this area, the actual percentage must be a lot higher.
They are already identifying which shops they will no longer travel to (who would pay £12.50 to shop in Tesco?). But more importantly, people who have to regularly visit hospitals in Sidcup and Orpington are adding up what it will cost them. A nurse working in the hospital in Sidcup and living in Swanley will pay £25 for the privilege of working nights.
There's a single mother saying she is in tears because she can't afford to buy a new car, her current car is old but reliable. Her child goes to school in Orpington, so she will have to go into the zone 5 days a week. Public transport from the town where she lives will take an hour and 20 minutes, it's 15 minutes in the car.
Scrappage - £2000 to scrap your car that otherwise you might get years more service from. You're ideally supposed to then joyfully jump on public transport, but honestly that's not a practical option if you live in these adjoining towns, or even in a lot of the expansion areas. The infrastructure simply isn't in place. Oh, and you can only get scrappage if you are inside ULEZ, if you live 100 metres up the road from the border you can't, but you are just as affected.
Or take your £2k and go buy a compliant car... if you have enough money to pay the top up. Prices of second hand compliant cars have shot up, you won't get one for £2k.

I'm not posting this on my behalf, I have a compliant car. I'm just highlighting the fact that the implications of this are going to be far reaching and cause real hardship.

What a great way of illustrating you have no idea at all.

It’s pretty miraculous actually. Only £12.50 for my car not to belch out anything unpleasant. The Mayor has found a way to make a daily charge take away all nasty emissions.

When they raise the charge (as they inevitably will), it will make the car emit pure oxygen.

If it wasn't a scheme to make money they would have made some of the end-of tube line carparks outside the ULEZ. For example, the Cockfosters station car park is now inside the ULEZ even though it is extremely close to the M25.
That would have encouraged people to leave their car behind although the car park is no where near big enough.
Money making is a big part of this scheme

I doubt that.

It's consistently made less than projections, and required specific permission to be allowed to continue under the TfL bailout

Exactly , 17 years old. Whilst I don’t agree with the ULEZ, I don’t understand all these people saying they can’t afford to replace their car with a ULEZ compliant one. Any petrol car since 2006 is ULEZ compliant. My Mum’s 16 year old Fiesta worth about £500 is ULEZ compliant. Whatever your budget, there is a ULEZ compliant car for you.

Isn't it the people with diesel cars who are affected more perhaps

So in the middle of a cost of living crisis you now want me to find an extra £375 pounds a month just to go to work 👍 or do I add 3.5 hours on to my day using the awesome public transport system that doesn’t run 24/7 and doesn’t go across the Thames ?

Our diesel Nissan Xtrail isn't compliant, it was first registered in January 2015, a £500 much older Fiesta is hardly the same

No it’s not, which is why I said there is a ULEZ compliant car for every budget. If you sold your X Trail, you’d have a much bigger budget than £500 and would be able to get something more comparable to it.

You can't get a comparable car for the money. We have two ancient high mileage diesel workhorses that we've had from virtually new, meticulously maintained them, and they have at least another 50-100,000 miles in them.

The residual value is practically nil.

To replace them with like for like spec would mean a massive trade-up and at least £10k per car.

That's not going to happen. So now I will have drive 200 motorway miles in the DC's tiny but compliant petrol runaround to visit aged parents who live both sides of the ULEZ border. That's the madness of it.

If the residual value is practically nil, how is getting a like for like car going to cost £10k?

Surely you can buy an equivalent petrol
version of the same spec and age for around the same value of your current cars?

Diesel cars are much better for towing so we will be replacing it with another diesel, which will cost a lot more, petrol cars are not so good with a heavy caravan

You've obviously not looked at the price of second hand ULEZ compliant petrol cars recently! They are SHOCKING! We looked at a 6 year old Ford Grand C-Max, and it was £19k!!!!!!!!! for a 6 year old car!

Getting a tiny car just isn't practical for many people.

@Doris86 I clearly said it would mean a massive trade up.
Why would I scrap a perfectly good car, well maintained and with a perfect service history for an unknown old banger?

Just to humour you, I've looked at the value of equivalent mileage / spec / age petrol versions and they are 2 or 3 times the price of diesels.