Massive money vacuum pretending to be environmentally excusable

[Muddays]

Does anyone actually know where the astronomical amount of money that the ULEZ charge has generated and increased over the past few years gone? I have tried to find out what it's being spent on and keep on ending up back at the start of my enquiry with vague fobbing off platitudes signifying absolutely nothing. E.g, are any charities receiving money from this charge, which would amount to millions each day?

Watching with interest.

Hehehe - that's pretty funny, thinking that they might give the money to charity.

It's almost like thinking the money generated from hospital car parks by staff and visitors paying for parking gets given to the hospital to help pay for services!

No - the money will be lining some rich bastard's pockets in the form of dividends and shares...

@MrsDoyle351 I agree and am not naive. To quote a depressingly gormless drone with a title, Sadiq Khan, London Mayor, in the Guardian 5th March this year "the triple challenges of tackling toxic air pollution, the climate emergency and congestion mean we need to further reduce emissions from vehicles in London. We simply don't have time to waste.
"This is also a matter of social justice - with air pollution hitting the poorest communities the hardest. Nearly half of Londoners don't own a car but they are disproportionately feeling the damaging consequences polluting vehicles are causing."
Ok, So City Hall found that the poorest residential areas and all of London's hospitals, medical centres and care homes were in areas that breached the WHO guidelines for nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.
Then we're told 'a scrappage scheme would help charities, small businesses and vulnerable people adapt."
Look up London scrappage scheme online on trusted news sites and brace yourself.
So that failed. Where's the money gone then eh?
Reducing congestion by massively charging the public (who often have no choice) would be more tolerable if the huge amount of money gained by the government daily actually went towards improving the 'poorest communities' in London, including hospitals and care homes as a "matter of social justice". Instead of a redundant and insulting scrappage scheme to distract everyone from the flaming obvious piss take and blatant theft from the screwed again public that are too busy reeling from the last corrupt ripoff to complain and question the next.

I'm sceptical that you're asking in good faith, but anyway.....
The money goes to TfL, which is a non-profit-making entity, partially funded by government grant. As you may remember, in 2020/21/22 there were travel restrictions which resulted in huge loss of revenue to TfL. The money is helping with that hole in the budget, and also with switching the bus fleet to zero emissions.

@GolfEchoRomeoTangoIndia I am asking in good faith. However, any nonprofit organisation with government 'support' has to smile big so the taxman plays nice eh?

What baffles me is that there is no interest in the fact that scrapping an older, low milage perfectly economical runaround costs more to the world's environment overall than replacing with a new computerised all singing all dancing ULEZ compliant (& especially if electrified) vehicle.

Yes. The additional funds to help TfL post-pandemic came with strings attached, and there was a lot of pressure for it to raise more money and make cuts in spending, especially in the light of the subsequent economic downturn, the increased focus on "levelling up", and the fact that London wouldn't vote Tory even if Starmer was caught torturing kittens on YouTube.

I assume that the decisions taken on ULEZ were influenced by this: but it's not secret and sinister, the money is basically being spent on keeping the buses and tubes running at an affordable cost in the context of a drastic spending crunch. You may feel that it was the wrong way to raise money, and the outer boroughs are being used as a cash cow: that's a different question.

@Ariela Bravo! Finally proof of life out there. Thank you.

You don't have to have a shiny new computerised vehicle though. That's a frequently repeated fallacy designed to push the "it's hitting the poorest hardest" narrative. My little ULEZ-compliant Focus is coming up for her fifteenth birthday this year and has a street value of bugger all.

However the recent spike in second-hand car values has made transferring vehicles more expensive than it would have been when the scheme was originally planned.

@GolfEchoRomeoTangoIndia I am absolutely interested in the "outer boroughs being used as a cash cow" and it's absolutely the same question. How you separate yourself from the core issue here is up to your conscience.

You asked what the money is spent on. The answer is that it's effectively propping up TfL in a spending crisis. HTH

well have you seen how much public transport costs outside London? I’d have thought the proceeds were hugely subsidising the enormously cheap underground and busses. I may be wrong

Loads of old petrol cars are ulez complaint.
My car is 10+ years old and is fine.
Feel bad for the people that bought a diesel because though.

I wish they spent the money on widening the criteria for motability scheme and the scrapage scheme.

Why would it be a money 'vacuum'? I don't understand?

Interesting you’re focused on the money, instead of the nearly 10,000 people who die per year in London from air population.

All of them avoidable deaths. Most concentrated among the poorest, those who live near busy roads, who are unable to move because of years long social housing waitlists.

Don’t those people count?

@GolfEchoRomeoTangoIndia we have old & diesel for economy. Sadly from last government push away from petrol to diesel.

OP - the money is going back to TfL who lost tonnes of revenue during the pandemic. Not sure why that's hard to find out?

@ReedRite I am concerned about the deaths due to air pollution, you clearly haven't understood what I am saying. I don't have a problem with reducing traffic and improving air quality at all. I have a problem with the people who are exploiting a serious issue for their own selfish agenda at the cost of those who really would benefit.
Why aren't the poorest areas being helped with the millions of pounds paid in charges every week, to improve the shabby quality of the environment they're expected to live in. Parks, playing fields etc are 'dead spaces' with developers deliberately running down areas so they can buy up land cheaper. Transport could be cleaner, cheaper and safer in deprived areas, easily. That's the problem, the money is not where it should be, so where is it?

@Beecham ok, so how,where is TfL spending millions of pounds a week more than the NHS? If it's so obvious please tell me.

Dp's car is 18 years old and ulez compliant. They certainly don't expect you to have a new car! What isn't ulez compliant are older diesels because they have health implications

buckle in, this is a long one.
this affects hundreds or thousands of small businesses and charities. Running mini buses and white vans.
theres been supply issues for years due to a microchip factory fire. So prices of old ones had gone up and the few new trickling through have gone up in price upon collection with delivery delayed by months. There wasn’t the supply to reach the demand before the expansion news. sole traders and small businesses cannot afford to splash out on a new van. Whilst older petrol cars are ulez exempt the diesel euro 6 only came into affect around 14/15/16. So they are newish and expensive vans that need purchasing, again demand is outstripping supply pushing prices up (remember the microchip issue already adding thousand onto vans).

if you lived within the m25 most people who were able to, as and when their vehicles needed replacing were charging to ulez compliant as you lived close enough to the zone to warrant it anyway. This is speeding it up without the supply to assist.
Hundreds of pounds has been added to the value of old ulez compliant petrol cars E.g mk1 1.6 petrol focus, was worth £300-£700. Now your looking £1000 upwards.
vans a whole different ball game due to just how new you need to buy one. TFL are offering £2000 scrap page for business vans, that will barely touch the sides given your current van is now worth scrap due to no one wanting it and supply shooting up for the rest of the country. Combine that with the fact you need a much much much newer van (with limited supply as every fucker needs it) the cost to change is crippling.

ultimately I don’t disagree with it needing to happen. To happen now it needed more support, it should have been put off until the microchip issue was resolved. It’s a perfect storm.

but the person above is right, the greenest car you can drive is the one you already own. The mining of precious materials and the carbon released in that is huge.

Parks, playing fields etc are 'dead spaces' with developers deliberately running down areas so they can buy up land cheaper.

So you want TfL to spend money on parks? Rather than the boroughs. You do know what the 'T' stands for don't you...

I don’t get how you think this is ‘exploiting’ the issue, or how the money would be spent in advance of raising it? Or, indeed, how you think the Mayor could spend each £ more than once?

As pp have pointed out, the government have told TFL it needs to raise way more money, so funds from the current ULEZ scheme have had to be diverted there. It props up the public transport coffers, so public transport in London is way cheaper than elsewhere. As you rightly point out, the corollary of ULEZ is the need to provide adequate public transport. So it is a good use of funds to plough £ raised from the ULEX back into buses and trains. For the expanded ULEZ zone, I expect funds will be used for the scrappage scheme and the increased public transport provision that comes with the scheme.

However, this means that if the money is spent here, it is spent and can’t be used for something else. But, there will be money for poorer families and people to buy compliant vehicles and use public transport and there will be more buses on the road. How much more visible do you want the spending to be?

Green spaces etc, I agree with you and would like to see more of this. I thought I had seen something about this from the Mayor, but am not up to speed with the detail. I guess there’s a limit as to what can be done when, as there would be the money or the staff to do everything we’d like at once.

@titchy yup, Tax.

@Damnautocorrect you're making the most sense right now.