Ulez expanded to include whole of outer London

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Chippy_Tea

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As you can imagine there were plenty of calls on the radio today when the topic of the ULEZ expansion was brought up, what most people didn't get was if this is all about air quality and saving the lives of Londoners why are they happy to allow the same dirty, polluting cars into the city as long as they pay £25 per day for the privilege, some suggested those driving super-cars and gas guzzling Chelsea tractors are not going to stop as £25 a day is nothing to them, yet again the less well off get shafted.



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The Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) has been expanded to include all of London's boroughs.
Drivers must pay a charge of £12.50 per day to drive a non-compliant vehicle anywhere in the zone under the controversial clean-air plan.
A £160m scrappage scheme is still available for all Londoners to claim from, with a maximum of £2,000 being offered per vehicle.
Small businesses, sole traders and charities are included in the scheme.

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To monitor the new zone, Transport for London (TfL) said it would install 2,750 cameras across outer London. As of mid-August 1,900 cameras had been erected, almost 70% of the total number planned.
Meanwhile, the Met Police has received hundreds of reports of criminal damage being done to cameras, with more than 300 of them either vandalised or stolen.
Nevertheless, TfL's director of transport strategy and policy, Christina Calderato, insisted the transport authority was "ready" for the expansion.
Ms Calderato also recommended people signed-up to an Auto Pay account on TfL's website, where drivers are automatically charged so they "will never receive a PCN (penalty charge notice)".
Those driving in the zone in a non-compliant car must pay the £12.50 charge online or by phone up to three days after they travelled.
The penalty for not paying is set at £180, which goes down to £90 if it is paid within 14 days.
Sadiq Khan told BBC Breakfast: "We now have a really effective policy to reduce air pollution.
"It's shown to be effective in central London and inner London, but I think clean air is a right not a privilege."

The mayor said more than 15,000 applications had been made to the Ulez scrappage scheme in the past week.
Since the announcement was made about the expansion in 2022, it has been met with opposition by some politicians and motorists.
Five Conservative councils took the policy to the High Court but lost after the judge ruled the mayor's expansion decision "was within his powers".
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the expanded scheme was going to "hit working families".
"I don't think that's the right priority, I don't think that's the right thing to do and I wish they hadn't done it," he added.

Members of Mr Khan's own party were also hesitant to support the policy after Labour lost the by-election in Boris Johnson's former seat of Uxbridge and Ruislip.
At the time, Labour leader Keir Starmer refused to say whether he backed the Ulez expansion, and told the BBC the mayor should "reflect" on the policy.
The Conservative mayoral candidate Susan Hall has pledged to reverse the Ulez expansion if she is elected mayor in May 2024.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66592199
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I drove to work through the new zone today. The roads were honestly no different to what they were the same time last week. Only difference was that a majority of the drivers were down twelve and a half quid!
 
As the mayor pointed out, if it was a cash grab he'd merely have extended the congestion charge with no scrappage scheme (as suggested by Grant Schapps) and just raked it in for evermore. In a few years' time, the polluting vehicles will be off the road and the income from the ULEZ charge will be next to nothing.
 
As the mayor pointed out, if it was a cash grab he'd merely have extended the congestion charge with no scrappage scheme (as suggested by Grant Schapps) and just raked it in for evermore. In a few years' time, the polluting vehicles will be off the road and the income from the ULEZ charge will be next to nothing.

When it gets close to that point the goal posts will move, you see.
 
When it gets close to that point the goal posts will move, you see.
Depends on how you look at it. Removing the worst offending vehicles is only one step to fixing pollution. It wouldn't come as a surprise if there were further measures in the future. Certainly, if a Tory becomes mayor there'll be pay per mile in no time (both Johnson and Sunak are advocates).
 
The problem is banning diesel cars at only 7 years old. It would have been more acceptable to match the registration date with petrol cars at 12 years old & just make the age roll with time.

Also the issue is with all the people living near the boundary & that far out from the center of London, public transport is pretty poor in certain not spots.

As one of my acquaintances says, if he wants to go to London now he can just take his smokey old classic out for a run.
 
Depends on how you look at it. Removing the worst offending vehicles is only one step to fixing pollution. It wouldn't come as a surprise if there were further measures in the future. Certainly, if a Tory becomes mayor there'll be pay per mile in no time (both Johnson and Sunak were advocates).
I don't like this or all those anpr cameras as it's an invasion of my privacy & I don't want the establishment treating me like a criminal & tracking my every movement. At least you can leave your phone at home or switch it off.
 
As the mayor pointed out, if it was a cash grab he'd merely have extended the congestion charge with no scrappage scheme (as suggested by Grant Schapps) and just raked it in for evermore. In a few years' time, the polluting vehicles will be off the road and the income from the ULEZ charge will be next to nothing.
Really, so after having £100,s of millions extra to spend, once all vehicles are compliant he can balance the books without the huge amounts of extra money ?
 
This is a Tory scheme, initiated by Boris Johnson, probably the only good thing he's done in his miserable, self-serving existence. It has ( had ), total cross-party support. Nitrogen Dioxide levels have been reduced by 46%, for example. It affects a tiny minority of vehicles, contrary to the massive amount of fuss made by the client media. Sadiq Khan was threatened with defunding by the government if he didn't accelerate the ULEZ rollout. Seems the poor guy has been thrown under the bus by both main political parties. Also, interesting that the road-blocking by the ULEZ protesters recently wasn't treated in the same manner that the Just Stop Oil protests were. It's almost as if policing has now been politicised. Classic example of an absolute non-story.
 
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Sadiq Khan's tax on the less well-off. If he really cared about air quality, he'd have banned non-compliant vehicles, or does paying £12.50 somehow magically reduce the emissions?

You'd think the aim might be to push more people to use public transport, yet then you find out that the air quality on the Underground is far worse than that at street-level. That's OK though - out of sight, out of mind.
 
It's unfortunate that it penalises the less well off. Not that it's anything to do with Sadiq Khan, as I've already explained. Videos of Boris the halfwit explaining what a great thing this is are readily available. Videos of Boris the halfwit explaining what a terrible thing ULEZ is are also available. This says a great deal more about Boris than it does about ULEZ. People need to get over biting whenever the Telegraph/Mail/Express/Sun yank their chain. Any paper that backed Brexit or Truss's mini fiscal brainfart/insider trading isn't worth taking seriously. The data is in, quit pretending.
 
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It's unfortunate that it penalises the less well off. Not that it's anything to do with Sadiq Khan, as I've already explained. Videos of Boris the halfwit explaining what a great thing this is are readily available. Videos of Boris the halfwit explaining what a terrible thing ULEZ is are also available. This says a great deal more about Boris than it does about ULEZ.

It doesn’t matter who’s original idea it was, Khan has implemented it!
 
He doesn't have a choice, he get's defunded otherwise. How hard is that to understand ?
 
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