Do you support the ULEZ expansion?

[icecream99]

Just curious as it is due to start at midnight tonight and could potentially cause a lot of chaos. I don't support it.

YANBU - I DON'T support ULEZ expansion

YABU - I DO support ULEZ expansion

Sorry, posted too soon, but: It's a bit mad to say "I want a European city with nice tram and bus services" but then object to more housing being built in the city. If you want that kind of city, you need lots of people living in the center of town, or it's just not going to be financially viable to have all these public transit routes.

Will this be the reality though

Is it actually going to go to be allocated to nurses, teachers etc

If you build more housing in the center of town, it will gradually increase the general availability and affordability of housing there (and even in other areas), whatever you do.

You don't have to go all Singapore and start allocating new housing to specific types of people in a "social engineering" type of way.

Even if someone who isn't a nurse moves into a property among the newly built housing, that frees up a different property in the center which they would otherwise have moved into and which a nurse might now move into.

Yes absoultly.

I grew up in London in zone 1/2 with very high levels of air pollution and a large number of children at my school were asthmatic. It's now said that children growing up in London have 20% lower lung capacity because of it. If true you have to be a monster to be ok with that imo.

There are of course some people who need a vehicle (disabled, night workers etc.) and they should be helped or excluded but very few people NEED a car in London or would be much better off with street car share scheme which sadly seem to have always failed. Maybe TFL could step in with this if they haven't already.

You got the wrong end of the stick. I’m totally fine with housing instead of the factories. They’re not building that. As I mentioned they are instead building a massive incinerator to burn most the waste of north London. All the wealthy boroughs will sent their rubbish to the NE corner and have it burnt here with a massive plume over the schools. More distribution has been built, more lorries come. MORE pollution is being generated. In the ulez zone on a grand scale and existing issues, like sewage overflowing into canals regularly etc isn’t being addressed. There’s no plan to curtail it, only increase it.
Id very very happily swap for more housing. It’s not that profitable. Unless you are going to do a really really shit conversion of an office block to flats, with no transport links, and house homeless families there in substandard housing outside town.
The schools are actually struggling with falling rolls and a funding crisis. I totally welcome family housing. Some have closed, others dropped forms of entry etc

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/31/edmonton-incinerator-expansion-fundamentally-unjust-say-residents

Fair enough. I did not realize that you were talking about the incinerator rather than housing.

I can't believe the sob stories of people who say they can't manage without their car and how will they get anywhere, or visit their old parents, or do their voluntary work etc. Seriously what is wrong with people these days. If you can't afford to pay the ULEZ or get a compliant car the get on the bus or the train and if you can't do that then stay home - it's not rocket science.

Or maybe people could walk somewhere, apparently two-thirds of the country are overweight and the fastest growing fat group are the kids! Think of the drain on the NHS with all the illness that will cause. That's what we should be more worried about not whether someone can afford to take their polluting old banger out for the day. It's not ok for anyone's kids to grow up with damaged lungs, my kids had to as they are now in their 20s but hopefully if they have kids then their children will have cleaner air.

Nah, Mum has got herself into £40k debt for that SUV so she's dam well going to use it

Sad but true.

It's not ok for anyone's kids to grow up with damaged lungs, my kids had to as they are now in their 20s

Are your children's lungs damaged? Is that a medical diagnosis?

It's a load of old guff. Essex boys driving 100k range rovers pontificating that poor single mothers won't be able to take their kids to school. What this really is driver angst at being regulated at all. That explains all the paranoia about what is a local scheme in one part of the country.

One of the sob stories in another thread was of a (possibly fictional) nurse who needed to travel between Swanley and Sidcup. It's only four miles! Wouldn't break a sweat on a bike.

15-20% of journeys under 1 mile are driven.

Some of the arguments remind me of the nutty end of the American right.

Mine are. I grew up in London.

All sort of schemes to limit car driving or parking in any way round here tend to be met with lots of handwringing concern for the "poor, elderly and disabled". Not emntoning that poorer, older and disabled people in London tend not to be car owners in the main due to the already higher fixed costs of car ownership and driving in London and of course the great alternatives (free transport for older and disbled people).

Of course there will always be edge cases of some from these groups being negatively hit - which is why there should be targeted help and exemptions.

Exactly. What kind of people want to force pollution, and the lower quality of life and lower life expectancy that entails, on others?

Of course there should be decent public transport put in place and cars should be banned rather than charged. The governments of the last 30 years have failed appallingly there.

I grew up in London too with chain smoking parents as an added extra. I'm fairly certain my lungs are fine...I've never had any health scares in relation to them. How do you know your lungs are damaged? Did a doctor tell you that?

Drinkable water and breathable air. What kind of lefty nutter wants that? More filth please.

Yes, asthma, low lung capacity, have annual checkups. It means I can't do exercise I want to and get out of breath quickly.

There's plenty of evidence of the harm it does to people living here. No need for one-off anecdotes.

I don't think cars should be banned, but their use should be restricted and made more difficult with measures like restricted parking and congestion charging until people realise it isn't worth it.

Some people will take longer to come to that conclusion than others. Some people will be so rich that it won't bother them - but those people are unlikely to be driving non-compliant cars.

That's why the £12.50 a day charge for driving a non-compliant vehicle is fair. It hurts - I could think of something better to do with the money - but it gives those people who have not yet done so, time to adjust to the idea that their right to pollute the air does not trump my right to breathe it.

What's unfair about that?

but it gives those people who have not yet done so, time to adjust to the idea that their right to pollute the air does not trump my right to breathe it

You must not forget how we were lied to about diesel.

Forgive my selfish concern about my lungs and the lungs of others, particularly the very young and the very old, whose number I wish to join one day.

Do you think people who drive old bangers do it out of choice or because its all they can afford?

My brother has had the same car in London now for 16 years. Its got a relatively low mileage as he doesn't need it much... but what he does use it for can't be easily replicated with public transport. Most of the mileages these days are taking my parents to hospital appointments.

Being a 57 petrol, its a compliant car. But a couple of years older, it wouldn't be... but its probably contributed a lot less to pollution in London than a modern car driven a few miles daily!