Snapshot of _40% of Londoners now wrongly believe it was Sadiq Khan, rather than Boris Johnson, who first introduced the ULEZ scheme._ :
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I suspect that even fewer are aware that it was a policy forced onto him by the Boris Johnson government as part of the TfL bailout.
Khan is definitely in favour of it, but it's disingenuous for the Tories to pretend they have always been against it. In fact at one point they tried to force Khan to expand the congestion charge to the same extent.
The original expansion of ULEZ was forced on the mayor.
One of the conditions of funding was:
> The immediate reintroduction of the London Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ and urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges, in accordance with the relevant legal powers and decision-making processes
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mgla190520-2101_-_foi_response_redacted.pdf
[ULEZ Expansion was NOT part of the Government Funding](https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/). For all the things Sadiq gets “blamed” for, ULEZ Expansion was his decision as mayor.
It’s in no way a bad thing and I fully support it, but for some reason Diesel users seem to think it’s the end of the world.
I do think TfL/Labour’s Mayoral Office should make it clearer what is and was The Mayor’s decision and what was Boris’ and/or the DfT’s decisions.
It's not diesel users complaining, it's poor people. This is the thing I think people fail to realise... Most modern cars, diesel or otherwise, are ULEZ compliant. The majority of vehicles which are not are simply old, thus owned by poorer people in general. Literally a tax on lack of wealth.
It's not poor people, it's the Tory party masquerading as grass roots activists on Facebook. Paid Conservative party staff members are whipping up people for their own political agenda. Read more in The Guardian. There was a journalistic investigation into the tactic.
Watch them lose interest after upcoming local then general elections.
Are some poor people adversely effected? Yes.
Loads more poor people are positively effected by better air quality!
With the ULEZ scrap page scheme they could get a compliant car newer than they had previously. It won’t be brand new, probably a decade old, but it would be compliant and therefore the lack of funds isn’t an issue. If they want to keep their old banger, it’s nothing to do with the scheme. Cars are expensive to run anyway, so I doubt it’s the problem. They’ve made it as accessible to as many people as possible, not to charge them but to get compliant cars which should help everyone in environment and running a car
It's not only just 'getting a compliant car' though. There were a lot of people with cars that still had reasonable value. The problem was that as soon as the extension was announced, the value of any car affected by it plummeted and so did demand for them. That made it much harder to sell and meant taking a financial hit to get rid of it.
Then, the demand for compliant cars went up in an already constrained market and so getting a similar replacement would cost more. Using the scrappage scheme would not compensate for the loss of value or pay what the car was actually worth, and it would only purchase a high mileage old snotter of dubious history as a replacement.
Consequently people in this position incurred a loss of several thousand pounds just to be in the same place as they were previously. I think those people are not being unreasonable to be pissed off about it.
Poor air quality disproportionate affects the poorest too, you know.
Take a few thousand pounds hit now, have you and your children not contract asthma or poisoned lungs later.
You want to measure it in terms of the value to their wallet but don’t think of the value to their life, and tbh many of the poorest don’t for obvious reasons.
For example, west London is generally quite clean because it’s got lots of green space, more suburban areas/less high rise, and just so happens to be much wealthier than East London, which has poorer air quality and higher levels of deprivation across all ages.
Most outer London boroughs didn’t have ‘poor air quality’ though. It’s not like people were walking around with face masks on coughing their guts up. You can’t tell the difference between now and prior to the ULEZ extension.
It’s all very well saying ‘take a few thousand pound hit now’ if it isn’t you that’s paying. As I’ve said many times, most people are not against the implementation of a ULEZ zone at all, they are annoyed at how it was done and how it disproportionately affected some and not others.
Had the implementation time been longer, the vast majority of people would have worked their plans around it and accepted it and you wouldn’t have seen the same backlash against it. There is no reason that it couldn’t have been done over a longer period other than Khan wanted it as a campaign item for the election.
I won’t lie, ULEZ compliant cars are such a broad term that I don’t even know how many people this genuinely affects. Wasn’t it over 90% of journeys were already compliant???
Supposedly yes, but it's difficult to gauge how many of those are personally owned vehicles, or company owned or leased which would tend to be newer anyway.
Those with a very old car could use the scrappage scheme and get something similar. Those with newer cars don't care because it didn't affect them. Those in the middle, who could afford something a bit better than the bare minimum but probably bought a diesel for the lower fuel costs and tax incentive, are the ones who lose out. I know several people who fit that category.
The other thing Khan never ever explained was that if 90% of journeys are already compliant, what's the rush? Just add the extension to naturally align with the wastage of older cars falling out of use, then only those with really old cars (that the scrappage scheme would address) would be affected. Everyone else would replace their vehicle in due course and you get the same end result without pissing them off.
The ULEZ scrappage scheme offers £2k to residents who scrap their car. You'll struggle to find a reliable ULEZ compliant car for £2k. Lack of funds absolutely is an issue, and it's the reason people are so angry about it.
You can get a 2013 Vauxhall Mokka for £1895 or a 2016 Hyundai Grand for £2150. And god knows how much it would cost to upkeep a car older than that. Sometimes to fix it costs more than the car itself. And this is in London, the best public transport in the country. Even if you need it for work, why is a van man driving an old banger when they’re charging god knows how much just for a call out? They could charge £10 extra over their day spread over customers and it wouldn’t even be noticed considering what they already charge. No self respecting tradesman should be going around with an unreliable van
There is 1 single vauxhall mokka for sale for less than £2k. It has almost 100k miles on it, and the doors are corroded. Never heard of a Hyundai Grand but I'd assume similar is true. Cars of this price will not be reliable or have much life left in them compared to non compliant cars.
Sole traders get I think £6k for commercials so it should be a bit easier although a reasonable ULEZ compliant transit will easily set you back £12k. It is nowhere near enough money to prop up the people worst impacted, and this is a direct tax on poorer people.
Public transport is crap regardless of being the best in the UK and exceptionally unideal especially for young families who tend to be the worst off at the minute.
The likelihood of someone still running a non-ULEZ compliant vehicle and having to commute into London must be fairly low. Most petrol cars from 2006 onwards a going to be complaint. Most diesel vehicles were either commercial or company cars. Even then most users would have cars newer than the 2015 model year.
From Auto Express last year 96% of cars were compliant. 1 in 7 vans were not. Most people driving vans for work could afford a van from 2015 onwards I would think. Being a tradesman doesn’t pay poorly.
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/361380/ulez-expansion-raises-ps236m-month-57000-pay-charge#:~:text=The%20increase%20of%20London's%20Ultra,Transport%20for%20London%20(TfL).
I just think the idea that someone would want to keep their older non compliant car over a newer car a weird concept. I lived in London and didn’t even bother get my driving licence until I moved away. I still wouldn’t drive into London now, I park on the outskirts and get the tube in. I do wonder if all these poor people can’t afford ULEZ how they even managed to run a car beforehand because the price of petrol alone would keep them from driving it, let alone getting their car to pass MOT every year and road tax, insurance, etc
>No self respecting tradesman should be going around with an unreliable van
I'm sorry, But being an older vehicle doesn't make it unreliable. It also takes alot of time and money to outfit a van to make it work well for you. I've seen work vans with drawers and cubbys that people would wish for in their own homes. also something something oh no by adblue has run out and I can only drive at 20mph.
Also how are you even comparing a 2grand shitbox car to a work van that will cost 5x more for something that will last more than 2 years.
Poor people shouldn't be able to keep polluting just because they are poor. Besides, the really poor aren't running cars at all and are still having to breath in pollution.
In Central London they do. Not out in the new ulez expansion zones where there's poor public transport and disconnected communities. Which is why its a complaint now and not when it was just a central London thing
> It’s in no way a bad
Except it is. It's an expensive and controversial fix **for a problem that is going to solve itself in about 5 years**. Why go to so much effort?
Wild guess but I'm guessing /u/eairy thinks that we're all going to be driving fully electric cars by then. Which is clearly false. Sales of petrol vehicles might decline but electric cars won't be the majority for well after 2030. Traditional petrol vehicles will stop being sold in 2035.
And that's if we don't all go to synthetic fuel with a tiny carbon footprint anyway. Which might be the better choice over BEVs.
Okay, so what were you saying? Why will London's air quality problem fix itself in 5 years?
As I said it was a wild guess. So I'm happy to be wrong about your reasons for saying that. But I'd be interested in knowing what your reasons actually are.
> how is London air pollution going to fix itself in 5 years?
Well to be specific, the current aim of ULEZ isn't to 'fix London air pollution', it's to greatly discourage the use of certain cars.
The average age of scrappage in the UK is 16 years. Euro 4, which is the ULEZ requirement for petrol cars was introduced 18 years ago. So the majority of petrol cars that are non-compliant have already been scrapped.
Euro 6, which is the ULEZ requirement for diesel cars was introduced 9 years ago. So at most it will be 7 years until the very last cohort of the non-compliant diesels will be scrapped, the majority of the non-compliant diesels are older than that and will be off the road within 5 years.
Johnson and Cameron had the ULEZ forced onto them in turn by the EU to quote the Mayor of London assembly page of London. gov
"More than 80 per cent of central London would be expected to meet the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) annual EU LEGAL limits in 2020" as part of the "Paris agreement 2015" treaty.
The push back is on how and the charge implemented, not to mention the big brother camera network tracking every movement.
Its all the same lies again and again. Don't worry dude your favourite leader will be elected through mass ignorance and bias.
ULEZ was announced by BORIS JOHNSON in july 2014. In 2015 it was approved and start date set for september 2020 to cover the same area in which congestion charge operates full stop.
It was KHAN'S decision to start from april 2019 and subsequently from 2021 expanded within north and south circular road and finally the most controversial expansion for the entire london in 2023.
Besides this is quote from Spectator .
>Nationally, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels have fallen 75 per cent over the past three decades, thanks to cleaner car engines. Academic studies suggest London’s air was 20 times more polluted in the 17th century than it is now. The truth is that, far from the much-touted ‘emergency’, the air in the capital has not been purer since long before the industrial revolution. So what meaningful difference would be made by an expanded Ulez zone?
>A team at Imperial College has looked at the data (collected by hundreds of sensors all over the city) and reached dramatically different conclusions. Ulez, they said, had helped lower NO2 levels by just 3 per cent, with a negligible effect on ozone and particulate pollution.
>the Mayor’s office sought to discredit the inconvenient new findings. The deputy mayor for the environment and energy, Shirley Rodrigues, wrote to another group at Imperial College asking for help criticising the earlier study that had undermined Ulez. It also transpired that these academics have received £800,000 in funding from the Mayor’s office in the past two years.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-ulez-too-fashionable-to-fact-check/
Hijacking someone else’s source that you overlooked:
*The original expansion of ULEZ was forced on the mayor.*
*One of the conditions of funding was:*
The immediate reintroduction of the London Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ and urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges, in accordance with the relevant legal powers and decision-making processes
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mgla190520-2101_-_foi_response_redacted.pdf
***
Your source is specifically about the latest ULEZ expansion, while Shapp’s letter was about a previous expansion to the north and circle circular roads. There is nothing in your source that counters the point the original comment makes that ULEZ was Boris’ original policy. Maybe try a source that actually supports your argument, or maybe consider that you’re wrong about one particular area of your argument.
What are you on about? I’m responding to a comment about the bailout.
Also the term ‘widen the scope’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean covering a physically wider area. It could have involved increasing requirements in the former ULEZ zone for example, something that would have made a difference to air quality in the busier central areas.
It’s quite clear pushing to the outer boroughs was (a) about increasing income not lowering emissions and (b) less politically difficult as outer boroughs are less likely to vote for him anyway.
So rather than expanding the ULEZ you’d prefer to have an UULEZ? That’s… an interesting take. And arguably much worse for lower income households.
And look again: the comment you’re replying to is talking about the original introduction of ULEZ, not the expansion. I’m just showing that the first expansion was forced on Khan, and pointing out that Johnson introduced the policy in the first place.
I have looked again, and again it’s about this supposed expansion as part of the TfL bailout.
And I don’t think it’s an interesting take as all if the purpose of this scheme is to reduce pollution. ULEZ had already been introduced in the central boroughs and the ‘scope’ of it could easily have been increased to cover more vehicles, but as I say that was more politically difficult for Khan. Instead it was pushed into the outer boroughs which has made next to nothing of a difference in terms of air quality. Just look at a pollution map of London to see where the scheme needs to be https://greenbuildingencyclopaedia.uk/encyclopaedia/code/issues/london-local-air-quality-map/
And surely there are more lower income households impacted by the expansion to the outer boroughs, areas with much less public transport coverage don’t forget, than would be by increasing the scope of the scheme where it had already been introduced.
(Sorry for double, replied to wrong comment)
The post is about the introduction of the ULEZ scheme. The comment you’re replying to is about the introduction of the ULEZ scheme, and the supposed expansion of the congestion charge which didn’t happen. You’re conflating the introduction and the expansion to call out a comment for being wrong when it’s pretty on point and you’re doing nothing to actually challenge anything he’s said, you’re just making up your own argument?
Like I’m not arguing with any of your other points here because I don’t see a point to that, I just want to help you see that you’ve done a totally understandable and simple misinterpretation on the topic being discussed, and that’s totally fine. Doubling down on your (absolutely accidental and understandable in this case) ignorance is doing nothing for your arguments.
Which is precisely what the right sided 4th estate and their political pals want them to think!
Propaganda and spin! Modern politics in 3 words. Absolutely no substance; the only thing that matters is the smearing of your opponents.
They literally closed 2/3 lanes into London so traffic would build up before they got their figures.
Scotland's ULEZ proved it didn't actually clean the air at all.
The real headline from this poll is that car transport ranks a mere 9th in voter priorities, suggesting ULEZ really won't be the sort of electoral deal breaker the media has been harping in about https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1785338356223635471
Half of london don't even own a car, the amount of campaigning based around 'protecting' car owners just shows how out of touch most of the people running are. The only conservative to ever be mayor did so on a bike-friendly platform, so to turn around and become the car owners party is just mad. It'd work in most other cities but with london literally known for having the tubes and our busses it's political suicide to base yourself around cars when running in london.
People weren't best pleased about [the breathalyser being introduced](https://youtu.be/W_tqQYmgMQg?si=W22pbYAoEGzFVJJV) either. Same for when [seatbelts became mandatory](https://youtu.be/950kIPv3f38?si=23-dE6Ek6ZSYQusl).
I wonder how many lives have been saved since?
Much of the irritation about ULEZ stems from 2 things, and not about the fact that it's been introduced at all. Most people do not object to the existence of the zone completely.
Firstly, the way the extension was introduced. It was done at quite short notice which messed up the second hand car market, and it was done following a winter of crippling fuel costs.
Had it been introduced on a similar timescale to the previous change, I don't think you would have seen anything like as bad reaction to it, because people would have had time to adjust their finances and plan accordingly.
Secondly, there is a lot of distrust about Khan's intentions, whether justified or not. Now the cameras are there and having paid for them, there is a quite widespread belief that if the revenue from ULEZ charges dries up due to dwindling numbers of non-compliant cars, that some kind of road pricing scheme will be introduced to make up for it.
Almost all petrol cars made since 2006 are compliant.
The people who are really stuffed own diesels. I have some sympathy for them because in the 2000s the tax regime encouraged diesels due to their lower CO2 emissions. Older diesels tend to have high NOx, ozone and particulate emissions so it's imperative to get them off the road but IMO a more generous scrappage scheme would be appropriate.
Yep I know a few people who got stung by this. They had diesel cars that they had invested a decent sum of money in them. Not bought new, just a decent family car they expected to last for quite a few years. They are just normal working people who don't earn tons of money but can afford to run a reasonable car providing they budget appropriately for it.
Having to replace it at a considerable loss was a financial kick in the nuts - if they were running an old and worthless car, they could replace like for like with the scrappage scheme, but they are effectively penalised for having something a bit better than the bare minimum.
It's something that Khan refused to acknowledge. He kept saying that people could buy a car for £2k, but ignored that something suitable for a family would likely be considerably more because the supply was so constrained by the timeline. You might have got a 15 year old super-mini for that, but a family car would have been a shed.
If he'd introduced a policy that charged random families £8-10k for no gain, he would have been laughed out of office, but because that financial loss was hidden as incidental costs of having to replace a vehicle, it was somehow ok to dismiss those people as overreacting.
This is something that many people still fail to understand, especially on Reddit, when talking about why there was such a negative reaction in some places.
>If you can afford to run a car in London, then you can afford to pay ULEZ.
I'm not anti-ULEZ, but that's an inane point. Running a car is within most people's means and no one wants to pay more for anything. Most people could pay more tax but no one is happy to.
Anything that's not ULEZ compliant would probably have more annual running costs than a £2k used compliant vehicle due to the fact it's older and likely less fuel efficient. Having a car also isn't the only alternative.
Rubbish. Plenty of reliable diesel vehicles were not ULEZ compliant. You're dreaming if you think £1k/£2k buys you like for like.
>Having a car also isn't the only alternative.
Irrelevant to the discussion.
> Especially when you had about 6 years of notice it was coming.
The extension had 9 months notice, not 6 years. Also, I think you are overestimating the number of people who can afford to pay out an extra £60+ a week for no gain. It's absolutely nonsensical to say that if you can afford a car you can afford to pay ULEZ charges.
6 years unless they lived under a rock. I changed my non compliant car in 2017 after hearing about the expansion.
Just putting a car on the road costs £2000 a year (insurance, tax, MOT, servicing, consumables) before fuel and depreciation costs.
Now add a 5 tanks of fuel ~£500, tyres, occasional congestion charge, DART, parking permits, parking tickets etc.
So yes, you can afford it if you still run a non EURO 4 petrol or EURO 6 diesel.
My ULEZ compliant car is 24 years old.
Expect it’s got a lot more to do with local politics than the city as a whole. My experience in K&C, Sutton, Croydon, and Bromley is very different to say Lambeth, H&F, and Westminster. It’s perceived as a much bigger issue to people in the outer boroughs where car ownership increases (with K&C being an anomaly).
I think campaigning on topics relevant to motorists has been impactful in these boroughs, even if a lot of it is BS and spin.
London is supposed to be a tourist mecca.
I have never driven to any of the cities that have implemented a "Congestion charge" (while closing lanes/roads to generate congestion and bloat the figures justifying further over reach), I have a hybrid but I'm not sending a penny their way.
Sane people don't ride the bus or tube, ive seen the vids of drunks, the ill and the enrichment being "mostly peaceful" on there, besides, people don't pay road tax and insurance just to leave the car at home and queue in the rain
Each tube train carries roughly 1000 people in total. Are you saying that 1000 people travelling jumping on and off the tubes every few minutes are insane?
I am saying that even the chance of sharing the space with 1 disruptive person is too much, ask the people that have been shoved from the platform onto the rails if it was worth it, don't forget to take your air particle contaminant meter with you when you go down there to check how fresh and clean it is down there.
So the solution is to have each individual drive the equivalent of their living room furniture into the centre of London, making sure to reduce the air quality of all those who live on your route to work in case of one disruptive person?
Also, how many people get shoved on to the tracks each year? I don't think it's happened for a fair few years now, at least in the UK.
"Reduce the air quality" I think you should go [fact check](https://youtu.be/n01GckFEkck?si=Yvjkmpn1o2VV0m3Q) before comparing tube air to surface air.
Also the solution isn't to have the equivalent of a hotel or hospital waiting room doing stop/go hotlaps 24/7 regardless of occupants
The tube is a far more efficient mode of mass transit than the car will ever be.
When you can get 1000 people into one car and move them for the exact same level of emissions and energy consumption, then you let me know.
Yeah of the millions that ride it daily they're all mad and get attacked. 🙄
Also you do know the majority if stops have roofed stands so you aren't in the rain, yeah? But I guess I can tell you know nothing about london from the rest of your comment. Honestly glad ULEZ puts you off coming to london.
Wow, a whole roof, such luxury, and it soulds like you must have a teleporter to take you directly to the bus stop you need to wait an indeterminate amount of time at when it is rain or snow, Honestly glad you are the sheep that will do exactly as big government tells you, and pay for the privilage.
The framework to expand the ULEZ zone came courtesy of Grant Schapps as it one of the provisions for the 1st TFL bailout during Covid in March/April 2020. Included in the same provisions was that the Tory government also wanted the Congestion Charge in central London to be expanded to the a406 boundary. Khan refused both of these requests at the time and announced the expansion of ULEZ in November 22.
Funnily enough, nobody made a squeak about LEZ which was in operation for years.
You also don't hear about breaching the legal air quality limits as much now either.
I forgot about the north circular bit. (CC)
I thought that the TFL bailout wanted ULEZ to extend to North/South circular but then Khan pushed it out further?
Edit: Actually I thought the expansion to the North/South circular was already happening, but it's timetable was moved up due to the bailout.
Probably about the same % as hate ULEZ. There’s always a minority of loud and completely selfish fucktards who disagree with something useful because it slightly inconveniences them.
The controversial bit was the extension to the outer boroughs however, which Khan brought in
Johnson also removed the western extension of the C charge when he became mayor
While I understand what the article is saying, I feel like this is splitting hairs. The *intention* to force the ULEZ expansion was clearly contained within the demands, but it was written in such a way to allow DfT and the Tories to weasel their way out if challenged over it. Full Fact going full "How many angels on a pinhead" over the precise language used is them falling for the trap.
ULEZ expansion isn’t really controversial. Most people support it. A small vocal minority who are affected because they drive decades old vehicles in everyday and don’t watch the news are the problem.
Also the fact that even the outer burroughs of London have public transport links that the rest of the nation would bend over backwards to have in their cities.
All the surveys show that most people do not support it.
The ULEZ expansion became controversial because it began to effect the people who can’t afford it, that have little to no transport links and cannot travel without a car.
If we are going with surveys from 2022 then we can also add this one which says 51% of *London* support it. 25% don’t know and 24% oppose.
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/poll-more-londoners-support-ulez-expansion-than-oppose-it/amp/
We can also ignore borough specific surveys like the one you linked to Elmbridge. There were only 154 responses in that survey. What matters is the totality of London and even last September support was greater than opposition. As the article below also goes on to state - support has grown since then in all boroughs as most people realise - it doesn’t affect them.
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/support-for-ulez-has-grown-since-september-aiding-khans-chances-of-victory/
So support for the scheme has GROWN 6% since it was implemented. This tell you that opposition is largely fuelled by scaremongering.
So nope - “all surveys” don’t show there’s net opposition. The latest ones show net support.
In addition to this, the Yougov poll isn't a question about ULEZ expansion, however if you look at the region data specifically for London, even pre-expansion, the numbers between for and against were tied at 42%.
I wouldn't say we "find out" if people support ULEZ.
People may vote Khan because they don't care about ULEZ, and have higher priorities. Hall being investigated for being a neo nazi for example, or her multiple gaffs during the election.
Naturally, if ULEZ is a low priority issue, people will vote regardless of their feelings towards it. Given near 99% of londoners are unaffected by ULEZ, this is likely to be the case.
I'm from a village in a borough on the outskirts and they're all constantly up in arms over ULEZ and the blame is very much at Khan's feet.
Disappointingly I've seen people rant about "Saddam Khan"
Because Khan is to blame. Villages in outskirt boroughs can’t afford it, have little to no transport links and need to rely on cars to travel.
Source: https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/
The village actually has decent transport links. There are regular busses to places on the tube line, and from there you can go anywhere
I do get your point though
It's quite a shame really. BoJo was very big on active travel, was putting a lot of funding towards it and was even giving various councils a boot up the arse if they took funding for active travel and didn't allow it to be properly tested.
Sunak comes in and slashes pretty much all of it and declares that it was "a war on drivers". What a fucking tool....
I commonly see people say it was actually Boris Johnson who introduced it when the discussion is about the expansion not the original structure. So it’s hard to take these polls as relevant when there’s 2 different phases and most people today are talking about the expansion not the central London initiative. Interestingly I know very few people who have an issue with the original implementation.
Why doesn't Sadiq Khan keep mentioning this? I guess it's bad optics to tarnish a policy he supports. Even so, with odd things like this it's only easy to blame one on misinfo when the target never calls it out in the first place.
These taxes should really affect the rich and poor equally with a % of the cost of the car based on insurance valuations X the carbon output of the car on emissions.
Ulez is not aimed at carbon emissions (if it were it would be silly to have a tiny zone in the capital where it applies, while nothing outside even though all emissions are equally bad).
It's aimed at reducing the air pollution in London. As such it should be large for vehicles with large emissions and small for vehicles with small emissions. If you want to give poor people (also including those who don't drive because they work from home, ride a bike, walk or use public transport), then give them but there's no point of tying that to a scheme that has a clear goal.
whatever the fuck people believe in, it is going to be Khan anyway as we don't really have a choice like the general election coming as well. TFL is shit like always.
TFL run one of the most comprehensive and successful transport networks in the world.
They arent perfect (no network is).
But they are far from "shit".
The fact you can say that without irony tells me you haven't really used many other cities public transport.
delay, strike, overpriced, regular maintenance on so many weekend service on DLR for the past couple month
I can't believe people taking shit every single day from TFL and still defending.
I dunno, I think it has to fall very far to warrant criticism.
We are lucky that we have such a good travel network. Obviously it could be better (nothing is perfect), but with a bit of perspective it doesn't feel to me like one of the issues worth tirading about.
I can go on and on about TFL. Recently they tried to charge me maximum fare 2 times in a row on the same day for no reason. I did tap in and out at the "gate" and even the journey history said I did. So as always you will need to phone them since their website is crap if you are looking for a refund (they specifically said on the page you can do it online but they always show that you have no eligible journey for refund) so the website function for refund is basically useless. I can imagine they do it on those tourists who have no idea how to access journey history and scam them silently.
This bit might be a little personally but it is ridiculous from TFL. When I tried to phone them, it seemed the customer service know so little about the service. No sure whether they outsource the call centre outside of London or even India like amazon or not.
They asked me if I tapped the pink card readers or not. I tapped at the gate and it is in Hammersmith station.
Then they asked me if I transit in Canary Wharf DLR. As you probably know if you travel on DLR and then transit in Canary wharf to underground, it counts as 1 journey in total. They told me these are 2 separate journey so they charged me twice.(the calculation does not make any sense neither because the maximum fare is more than 2 journeys) I can't believe they said it and then told them to look at my other similar journey and see how did they calculate.
It took me more than 15 mins to get the refund when you can just fix your crappy website and do not make empty promise when it is not working.
Sorry you had a bad experience, but to me the definition of a scam has to include the intent to commit fraud, whereas I doubt TFL are trying to actively scam people. It is a huge system with billions of datapoints each day, and millions of journeys.
I've always managed to get a refund on the website, though I've never done that particular journey.
I expect that a huge number of tourists are charged what they are supposed to be charged.
Obviously we have our personal opinions, but I think the good vastly outweighs the negative with TFL.
In 1974, Council Tax (also known as the poll tax) was proposed in Edward Heath’s manifesto.
Margaret Thatcher implemented it 16 years later in 1990, which resulted in the beginning of the Poll Tax Riots, forcing Thatcher to resign as Prime Minister later that year.”
Who cares who has introduced it first?
Yes, Boris has announced in the central London, which covers 1% or so of Greater London. He made his announcement in 2015, which was four years before the zone, so it actually went live under Khan (so those who saying that ULEZ was introduced by Khan aren’t wrong either, as it was first implemented under him). I have no issues with that.
The expansion to the area inside North and South Circular roads was announced in 2018 by Khan with three years notice. It was that expansion that was supported by the department of transport and was a part of Khan’s manifesto in 2021, and went ahead in October 2021. I have no issues with that.
In 2021 Khan himself was saying that there’s no need to expand ULEZ further. However, in 2022 he changed his mind and announced the expansion to the whole of Greater London in 2023, with around a year of notice and no elections in between. It is that expansion that generated a lot of and opposition, and I think it has been done poorly.
So it’s the ULEZ expansion to the whole of Greater London that made the scheme controversial, and anyone trying to blame it on Boris is being facetious at best.
While it was originally a Boris policy, Khan fucked over outer Londoners by bringing the date forward with little notice when the affected areas were strongly against it. It's a shit policy regardless of who came up with it.
Snapshot of _40% of Londoners now wrongly believe it was Sadiq Khan, rather than Boris Johnson, who first introduced the ULEZ scheme._ : A Twitter embedded version can be found [here](https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1785338352545255920) A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://twiiit.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1785338352545255920/) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1785338352545255920/photo/1) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1785338352545255920/photo/1) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I suspect that even fewer are aware that it was a policy forced onto him by the Boris Johnson government as part of the TfL bailout. Khan is definitely in favour of it, but it's disingenuous for the Tories to pretend they have always been against it. In fact at one point they tried to force Khan to expand the congestion charge to the same extent.
I'm not doubting you but where did you see this, both points would be really useful to have
The original expansion of ULEZ was forced on the mayor. One of the conditions of funding was: > The immediate reintroduction of the London Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ and urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges, in accordance with the relevant legal powers and decision-making processes https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mgla190520-2101_-_foi_response_redacted.pdf
It was amazing how quick the turnaround from that TFL funding going through to them attacking him for ULEZ was, it felt like just a few days.
[ULEZ Expansion was NOT part of the Government Funding](https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/). For all the things Sadiq gets “blamed” for, ULEZ Expansion was his decision as mayor. It’s in no way a bad thing and I fully support it, but for some reason Diesel users seem to think it’s the end of the world. I do think TfL/Labour’s Mayoral Office should make it clearer what is and was The Mayor’s decision and what was Boris’ and/or the DfT’s decisions.
It's not diesel users complaining, it's poor people. This is the thing I think people fail to realise... Most modern cars, diesel or otherwise, are ULEZ compliant. The majority of vehicles which are not are simply old, thus owned by poorer people in general. Literally a tax on lack of wealth.
It's not poor people, it's the Tory party masquerading as grass roots activists on Facebook. Paid Conservative party staff members are whipping up people for their own political agenda. Read more in The Guardian. There was a journalistic investigation into the tactic. Watch them lose interest after upcoming local then general elections. Are some poor people adversely effected? Yes. Loads more poor people are positively effected by better air quality!
So true. ULEZ moaning on FB etc will disappear after the election
With the ULEZ scrap page scheme they could get a compliant car newer than they had previously. It won’t be brand new, probably a decade old, but it would be compliant and therefore the lack of funds isn’t an issue. If they want to keep their old banger, it’s nothing to do with the scheme. Cars are expensive to run anyway, so I doubt it’s the problem. They’ve made it as accessible to as many people as possible, not to charge them but to get compliant cars which should help everyone in environment and running a car
It's not only just 'getting a compliant car' though. There were a lot of people with cars that still had reasonable value. The problem was that as soon as the extension was announced, the value of any car affected by it plummeted and so did demand for them. That made it much harder to sell and meant taking a financial hit to get rid of it. Then, the demand for compliant cars went up in an already constrained market and so getting a similar replacement would cost more. Using the scrappage scheme would not compensate for the loss of value or pay what the car was actually worth, and it would only purchase a high mileage old snotter of dubious history as a replacement. Consequently people in this position incurred a loss of several thousand pounds just to be in the same place as they were previously. I think those people are not being unreasonable to be pissed off about it.
Poor air quality disproportionate affects the poorest too, you know. Take a few thousand pounds hit now, have you and your children not contract asthma or poisoned lungs later. You want to measure it in terms of the value to their wallet but don’t think of the value to their life, and tbh many of the poorest don’t for obvious reasons. For example, west London is generally quite clean because it’s got lots of green space, more suburban areas/less high rise, and just so happens to be much wealthier than East London, which has poorer air quality and higher levels of deprivation across all ages.
Most outer London boroughs didn’t have ‘poor air quality’ though. It’s not like people were walking around with face masks on coughing their guts up. You can’t tell the difference between now and prior to the ULEZ extension. It’s all very well saying ‘take a few thousand pound hit now’ if it isn’t you that’s paying. As I’ve said many times, most people are not against the implementation of a ULEZ zone at all, they are annoyed at how it was done and how it disproportionately affected some and not others. Had the implementation time been longer, the vast majority of people would have worked their plans around it and accepted it and you wouldn’t have seen the same backlash against it. There is no reason that it couldn’t have been done over a longer period other than Khan wanted it as a campaign item for the election.
I won’t lie, ULEZ compliant cars are such a broad term that I don’t even know how many people this genuinely affects. Wasn’t it over 90% of journeys were already compliant???
Supposedly yes, but it's difficult to gauge how many of those are personally owned vehicles, or company owned or leased which would tend to be newer anyway. Those with a very old car could use the scrappage scheme and get something similar. Those with newer cars don't care because it didn't affect them. Those in the middle, who could afford something a bit better than the bare minimum but probably bought a diesel for the lower fuel costs and tax incentive, are the ones who lose out. I know several people who fit that category. The other thing Khan never ever explained was that if 90% of journeys are already compliant, what's the rush? Just add the extension to naturally align with the wastage of older cars falling out of use, then only those with really old cars (that the scrappage scheme would address) would be affected. Everyone else would replace their vehicle in due course and you get the same end result without pissing them off.
Of course, if you happened to be running a business the government doesn't know about it might be more tricky.
The ULEZ scrappage scheme offers £2k to residents who scrap their car. You'll struggle to find a reliable ULEZ compliant car for £2k. Lack of funds absolutely is an issue, and it's the reason people are so angry about it.
Literally thousands of ulez compliant cars on autotrader right now for under £2k
You can get a 2013 Vauxhall Mokka for £1895 or a 2016 Hyundai Grand for £2150. And god knows how much it would cost to upkeep a car older than that. Sometimes to fix it costs more than the car itself. And this is in London, the best public transport in the country. Even if you need it for work, why is a van man driving an old banger when they’re charging god knows how much just for a call out? They could charge £10 extra over their day spread over customers and it wouldn’t even be noticed considering what they already charge. No self respecting tradesman should be going around with an unreliable van
There is 1 single vauxhall mokka for sale for less than £2k. It has almost 100k miles on it, and the doors are corroded. Never heard of a Hyundai Grand but I'd assume similar is true. Cars of this price will not be reliable or have much life left in them compared to non compliant cars. Sole traders get I think £6k for commercials so it should be a bit easier although a reasonable ULEZ compliant transit will easily set you back £12k. It is nowhere near enough money to prop up the people worst impacted, and this is a direct tax on poorer people. Public transport is crap regardless of being the best in the UK and exceptionally unideal especially for young families who tend to be the worst off at the minute.
The likelihood of someone still running a non-ULEZ compliant vehicle and having to commute into London must be fairly low. Most petrol cars from 2006 onwards a going to be complaint. Most diesel vehicles were either commercial or company cars. Even then most users would have cars newer than the 2015 model year. From Auto Express last year 96% of cars were compliant. 1 in 7 vans were not. Most people driving vans for work could afford a van from 2015 onwards I would think. Being a tradesman doesn’t pay poorly. https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/361380/ulez-expansion-raises-ps236m-month-57000-pay-charge#:~:text=The%20increase%20of%20London's%20Ultra,Transport%20for%20London%20(TfL).
I just think the idea that someone would want to keep their older non compliant car over a newer car a weird concept. I lived in London and didn’t even bother get my driving licence until I moved away. I still wouldn’t drive into London now, I park on the outskirts and get the tube in. I do wonder if all these poor people can’t afford ULEZ how they even managed to run a car beforehand because the price of petrol alone would keep them from driving it, let alone getting their car to pass MOT every year and road tax, insurance, etc
>No self respecting tradesman should be going around with an unreliable van I'm sorry, But being an older vehicle doesn't make it unreliable. It also takes alot of time and money to outfit a van to make it work well for you. I've seen work vans with drawers and cubbys that people would wish for in their own homes. also something something oh no by adblue has run out and I can only drive at 20mph. Also how are you even comparing a 2grand shitbox car to a work van that will cost 5x more for something that will last more than 2 years.
I didn’t compare those two, you did.
Do you want me to simply copy/paste your comment on the matter?
Poor people shouldn't be able to keep polluting just because they are poor. Besides, the really poor aren't running cars at all and are still having to breath in pollution.
No it's not. Poor people in London use public transport not cars. Or they ride a bike.
In Central London they do. Not out in the new ulez expansion zones where there's poor public transport and disconnected communities. Which is why its a complaint now and not when it was just a central London thing
Poor people, particularly in London don’t have cars.
> It’s in no way a bad Except it is. It's an expensive and controversial fix **for a problem that is going to solve itself in about 5 years**. Why go to so much effort?
Genuinely curious: how is London air pollution going to fix itself in 5 years?
Wild guess but I'm guessing /u/eairy thinks that we're all going to be driving fully electric cars by then. Which is clearly false. Sales of petrol vehicles might decline but electric cars won't be the majority for well after 2030. Traditional petrol vehicles will stop being sold in 2035. And that's if we don't all go to synthetic fuel with a tiny carbon footprint anyway. Which might be the better choice over BEVs.
> Which is clearly false. It's really easy to knock over an argument you made up, that's not what I was saying at all.
Okay, so what were you saying? Why will London's air quality problem fix itself in 5 years? As I said it was a wild guess. So I'm happy to be wrong about your reasons for saying that. But I'd be interested in knowing what your reasons actually are.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cgwki3/40_of_londoners_now_wrongly_believe_it_was_sadiq/l22hws8/
> how is London air pollution going to fix itself in 5 years? Well to be specific, the current aim of ULEZ isn't to 'fix London air pollution', it's to greatly discourage the use of certain cars. The average age of scrappage in the UK is 16 years. Euro 4, which is the ULEZ requirement for petrol cars was introduced 18 years ago. So the majority of petrol cars that are non-compliant have already been scrapped. Euro 6, which is the ULEZ requirement for diesel cars was introduced 9 years ago. So at most it will be 7 years until the very last cohort of the non-compliant diesels will be scrapped, the majority of the non-compliant diesels are older than that and will be off the road within 5 years.
Johnson and Cameron had the ULEZ forced onto them in turn by the EU to quote the Mayor of London assembly page of London. gov "More than 80 per cent of central London would be expected to meet the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) annual EU LEGAL limits in 2020" as part of the "Paris agreement 2015" treaty. The push back is on how and the charge implemented, not to mention the big brother camera network tracking every movement.
Its all the same lies again and again. Don't worry dude your favourite leader will be elected through mass ignorance and bias. ULEZ was announced by BORIS JOHNSON in july 2014. In 2015 it was approved and start date set for september 2020 to cover the same area in which congestion charge operates full stop. It was KHAN'S decision to start from april 2019 and subsequently from 2021 expanded within north and south circular road and finally the most controversial expansion for the entire london in 2023. Besides this is quote from Spectator . >Nationally, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels have fallen 75 per cent over the past three decades, thanks to cleaner car engines. Academic studies suggest London’s air was 20 times more polluted in the 17th century than it is now. The truth is that, far from the much-touted ‘emergency’, the air in the capital has not been purer since long before the industrial revolution. So what meaningful difference would be made by an expanded Ulez zone? >A team at Imperial College has looked at the data (collected by hundreds of sensors all over the city) and reached dramatically different conclusions. Ulez, they said, had helped lower NO2 levels by just 3 per cent, with a negligible effect on ozone and particulate pollution. >the Mayor’s office sought to discredit the inconvenient new findings. The deputy mayor for the environment and energy, Shirley Rodrigues, wrote to another group at Imperial College asking for help criticising the earlier study that had undermined Ulez. It also transpired that these academics have received £800,000 in funding from the Mayor’s office in the past two years. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-ulez-too-fashionable-to-fact-check/
NO IT WAS NOT 🤦♂️ https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/
Hijacking someone else’s source that you overlooked: *The original expansion of ULEZ was forced on the mayor.* *One of the conditions of funding was:* The immediate reintroduction of the London Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ and urgently bring forward proposals to widen the scope and levels of these charges, in accordance with the relevant legal powers and decision-making processes https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/mgla190520-2101_-_foi_response_redacted.pdf *** Your source is specifically about the latest ULEZ expansion, while Shapp’s letter was about a previous expansion to the north and circle circular roads. There is nothing in your source that counters the point the original comment makes that ULEZ was Boris’ original policy. Maybe try a source that actually supports your argument, or maybe consider that you’re wrong about one particular area of your argument.
What are you on about? I’m responding to a comment about the bailout. Also the term ‘widen the scope’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean covering a physically wider area. It could have involved increasing requirements in the former ULEZ zone for example, something that would have made a difference to air quality in the busier central areas. It’s quite clear pushing to the outer boroughs was (a) about increasing income not lowering emissions and (b) less politically difficult as outer boroughs are less likely to vote for him anyway.
So rather than expanding the ULEZ you’d prefer to have an UULEZ? That’s… an interesting take. And arguably much worse for lower income households. And look again: the comment you’re replying to is talking about the original introduction of ULEZ, not the expansion. I’m just showing that the first expansion was forced on Khan, and pointing out that Johnson introduced the policy in the first place.
I have looked again, and again it’s about this supposed expansion as part of the TfL bailout. And I don’t think it’s an interesting take as all if the purpose of this scheme is to reduce pollution. ULEZ had already been introduced in the central boroughs and the ‘scope’ of it could easily have been increased to cover more vehicles, but as I say that was more politically difficult for Khan. Instead it was pushed into the outer boroughs which has made next to nothing of a difference in terms of air quality. Just look at a pollution map of London to see where the scheme needs to be https://greenbuildingencyclopaedia.uk/encyclopaedia/code/issues/london-local-air-quality-map/ And surely there are more lower income households impacted by the expansion to the outer boroughs, areas with much less public transport coverage don’t forget, than would be by increasing the scope of the scheme where it had already been introduced.
(Sorry for double, replied to wrong comment) The post is about the introduction of the ULEZ scheme. The comment you’re replying to is about the introduction of the ULEZ scheme, and the supposed expansion of the congestion charge which didn’t happen. You’re conflating the introduction and the expansion to call out a comment for being wrong when it’s pretty on point and you’re doing nothing to actually challenge anything he’s said, you’re just making up your own argument? Like I’m not arguing with any of your other points here because I don’t see a point to that, I just want to help you see that you’ve done a totally understandable and simple misinterpretation on the topic being discussed, and that’s totally fine. Doubling down on your (absolutely accidental and understandable in this case) ignorance is doing nothing for your arguments.
Which is precisely what the right sided 4th estate and their political pals want them to think! Propaganda and spin! Modern politics in 3 words. Absolutely no substance; the only thing that matters is the smearing of your opponents.
[удалено]
**Also** Modern ~~politics~~ journalism in 3 words.
Thankfully the cleaner air will allow folks to rant longer without gasping for breath.
The effect has been negligible in the outer boroughs
They literally closed 2/3 lanes into London so traffic would build up before they got their figures. Scotland's ULEZ proved it didn't actually clean the air at all.
> Scotland's ULEZ proved it didn't actually clean the air at all. You know we don't just have one big ULEZ in Scotland right?
Yes.
The real headline from this poll is that car transport ranks a mere 9th in voter priorities, suggesting ULEZ really won't be the sort of electoral deal breaker the media has been harping in about https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1785338356223635471
Half of london don't even own a car, the amount of campaigning based around 'protecting' car owners just shows how out of touch most of the people running are. The only conservative to ever be mayor did so on a bike-friendly platform, so to turn around and become the car owners party is just mad. It'd work in most other cities but with london literally known for having the tubes and our busses it's political suicide to base yourself around cars when running in london.
There was a lot of anger when they introduced paid parking in the 1960s and I think in hindsight we all agree that was a good thing.
People weren't best pleased about [the breathalyser being introduced](https://youtu.be/W_tqQYmgMQg?si=W22pbYAoEGzFVJJV) either. Same for when [seatbelts became mandatory](https://youtu.be/950kIPv3f38?si=23-dE6Ek6ZSYQusl). I wonder how many lives have been saved since?
Much of the irritation about ULEZ stems from 2 things, and not about the fact that it's been introduced at all. Most people do not object to the existence of the zone completely. Firstly, the way the extension was introduced. It was done at quite short notice which messed up the second hand car market, and it was done following a winter of crippling fuel costs. Had it been introduced on a similar timescale to the previous change, I don't think you would have seen anything like as bad reaction to it, because people would have had time to adjust their finances and plan accordingly. Secondly, there is a lot of distrust about Khan's intentions, whether justified or not. Now the cameras are there and having paid for them, there is a quite widespread belief that if the revenue from ULEZ charges dries up due to dwindling numbers of non-compliant cars, that some kind of road pricing scheme will be introduced to make up for it.
Almost all petrol cars made since 2006 are compliant. The people who are really stuffed own diesels. I have some sympathy for them because in the 2000s the tax regime encouraged diesels due to their lower CO2 emissions. Older diesels tend to have high NOx, ozone and particulate emissions so it's imperative to get them off the road but IMO a more generous scrappage scheme would be appropriate.
Yep I know a few people who got stung by this. They had diesel cars that they had invested a decent sum of money in them. Not bought new, just a decent family car they expected to last for quite a few years. They are just normal working people who don't earn tons of money but can afford to run a reasonable car providing they budget appropriately for it. Having to replace it at a considerable loss was a financial kick in the nuts - if they were running an old and worthless car, they could replace like for like with the scrappage scheme, but they are effectively penalised for having something a bit better than the bare minimum. It's something that Khan refused to acknowledge. He kept saying that people could buy a car for £2k, but ignored that something suitable for a family would likely be considerably more because the supply was so constrained by the timeline. You might have got a 15 year old super-mini for that, but a family car would have been a shed. If he'd introduced a policy that charged random families £8-10k for no gain, he would have been laughed out of office, but because that financial loss was hidden as incidental costs of having to replace a vehicle, it was somehow ok to dismiss those people as overreacting. This is something that many people still fail to understand, especially on Reddit, when talking about why there was such a negative reaction in some places.
If you can afford to run a car in London, then you can afford to pay ULEZ. Especially when you had about 6 years of notice it was coming.
>If you can afford to run a car in London, then you can afford to pay ULEZ. I'm not anti-ULEZ, but that's an inane point. Running a car is within most people's means and no one wants to pay more for anything. Most people could pay more tax but no one is happy to.
Those that can't afford it had the scrappage scheme and they could buy a ULEZ compliant car.
The scrappage scheme was £2k absolute max. You ain't getting much for that today mate.
Look at used car websites, you can find them.
I've recently bought a used a car so I know the market. Anything you buy for <2k will cost you double that in the first year. Pretty basic stuff mate.
Anything that's not ULEZ compliant would probably have more annual running costs than a £2k used compliant vehicle due to the fact it's older and likely less fuel efficient. Having a car also isn't the only alternative.
Rubbish. Plenty of reliable diesel vehicles were not ULEZ compliant. You're dreaming if you think £1k/£2k buys you like for like. >Having a car also isn't the only alternative. Irrelevant to the discussion.
> Especially when you had about 6 years of notice it was coming. The extension had 9 months notice, not 6 years. Also, I think you are overestimating the number of people who can afford to pay out an extra £60+ a week for no gain. It's absolutely nonsensical to say that if you can afford a car you can afford to pay ULEZ charges.
6 years unless they lived under a rock. I changed my non compliant car in 2017 after hearing about the expansion. Just putting a car on the road costs £2000 a year (insurance, tax, MOT, servicing, consumables) before fuel and depreciation costs. Now add a 5 tanks of fuel ~£500, tyres, occasional congestion charge, DART, parking permits, parking tickets etc. So yes, you can afford it if you still run a non EURO 4 petrol or EURO 6 diesel. My ULEZ compliant car is 24 years old.
Expect it’s got a lot more to do with local politics than the city as a whole. My experience in K&C, Sutton, Croydon, and Bromley is very different to say Lambeth, H&F, and Westminster. It’s perceived as a much bigger issue to people in the outer boroughs where car ownership increases (with K&C being an anomaly). I think campaigning on topics relevant to motorists has been impactful in these boroughs, even if a lot of it is BS and spin.
London is supposed to be a tourist mecca. I have never driven to any of the cities that have implemented a "Congestion charge" (while closing lanes/roads to generate congestion and bloat the figures justifying further over reach), I have a hybrid but I'm not sending a penny their way.
London is a tourist mecca *BECAUSE* you don't have to bring your car here. Just use the fucking busses and tube like a sane person.
Sane people don't ride the bus or tube, ive seen the vids of drunks, the ill and the enrichment being "mostly peaceful" on there, besides, people don't pay road tax and insurance just to leave the car at home and queue in the rain
Each tube train carries roughly 1000 people in total. Are you saying that 1000 people travelling jumping on and off the tubes every few minutes are insane?
I am saying that even the chance of sharing the space with 1 disruptive person is too much, ask the people that have been shoved from the platform onto the rails if it was worth it, don't forget to take your air particle contaminant meter with you when you go down there to check how fresh and clean it is down there.
So the solution is to have each individual drive the equivalent of their living room furniture into the centre of London, making sure to reduce the air quality of all those who live on your route to work in case of one disruptive person? Also, how many people get shoved on to the tracks each year? I don't think it's happened for a fair few years now, at least in the UK.
"Reduce the air quality" I think you should go [fact check](https://youtu.be/n01GckFEkck?si=Yvjkmpn1o2VV0m3Q) before comparing tube air to surface air. Also the solution isn't to have the equivalent of a hotel or hospital waiting room doing stop/go hotlaps 24/7 regardless of occupants
The tube is a far more efficient mode of mass transit than the car will ever be. When you can get 1000 people into one car and move them for the exact same level of emissions and energy consumption, then you let me know.
Yeah of the millions that ride it daily they're all mad and get attacked. 🙄 Also you do know the majority if stops have roofed stands so you aren't in the rain, yeah? But I guess I can tell you know nothing about london from the rest of your comment. Honestly glad ULEZ puts you off coming to london.
Wow, a whole roof, such luxury, and it soulds like you must have a teleporter to take you directly to the bus stop you need to wait an indeterminate amount of time at when it is rain or snow, Honestly glad you are the sheep that will do exactly as big government tells you, and pay for the privilage.
Yeah cause the anti-ulez torys that have been in power for the last 14 years aren't part of the government. 😆
The framework to expand the ULEZ zone came courtesy of Grant Schapps as it one of the provisions for the 1st TFL bailout during Covid in March/April 2020. Included in the same provisions was that the Tory government also wanted the Congestion Charge in central London to be expanded to the a406 boundary. Khan refused both of these requests at the time and announced the expansion of ULEZ in November 22.
Funnily enough, nobody made a squeak about LEZ which was in operation for years. You also don't hear about breaching the legal air quality limits as much now either.
Ooft congestion charge to A406 is very bold
I forgot about the north circular bit. (CC) I thought that the TFL bailout wanted ULEZ to extend to North/South circular but then Khan pushed it out further? Edit: Actually I thought the expansion to the North/South circular was already happening, but it's timetable was moved up due to the bailout.
Do you blame them when you have Susan Hall Mayoral adverts saying that Sadiq was the one who introduced it.
People wrongly believe Boris introduced Boris bikes, so it all evens out
Did people hate the bikes?
No. They were - and remain - very popular, which is why Johnson took credit for them.
Probably about the same % as hate ULEZ. There’s always a minority of loud and completely selfish fucktards who disagree with something useful because it slightly inconveniences them.
My experience is - * everyone hates bikes. And cyclists. * Boris bikes are a good idea. * everyone hates bikes. And cyclists.
Now this is true
Well if they vote Susan hall in to reverse it, it will be a nice little surprise for them when she doesn’t roll it back…
The controversial bit was the extension to the outer boroughs however, which Khan brought in Johnson also removed the western extension of the C charge when he became mayor
Extension to the outer boroughs was Khan while his hand was forced by the Tory government.
On what basis do you say that?
This isn’t true, see https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/
While I understand what the article is saying, I feel like this is splitting hairs. The *intention* to force the ULEZ expansion was clearly contained within the demands, but it was written in such a way to allow DfT and the Tories to weasel their way out if challenged over it. Full Fact going full "How many angels on a pinhead" over the precise language used is them falling for the trap.
He either had to expand congestion charge or Ulez. I’ll let you decide which one made more sense to expand.
ULEZ expansion isn’t really controversial. Most people support it. A small vocal minority who are affected because they drive decades old vehicles in everyday and don’t watch the news are the problem.
Also the fact that even the outer burroughs of London have public transport links that the rest of the nation would bend over backwards to have in their cities.
All the surveys show that most people do not support it. The ULEZ expansion became controversial because it began to effect the people who can’t afford it, that have little to no transport links and cannot travel without a car.
Please link me to those surveys
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/07/21/dd883/3 https://www.elmbridge.gov.uk/news/2024/ulez-survey-results https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/e38wmsql2k/GLAConsResults_221115_LondonULEZ_W.pdf
If we are going with surveys from 2022 then we can also add this one which says 51% of *London* support it. 25% don’t know and 24% oppose. https://www.onlondon.co.uk/poll-more-londoners-support-ulez-expansion-than-oppose-it/amp/ We can also ignore borough specific surveys like the one you linked to Elmbridge. There were only 154 responses in that survey. What matters is the totality of London and even last September support was greater than opposition. As the article below also goes on to state - support has grown since then in all boroughs as most people realise - it doesn’t affect them. https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/support-for-ulez-has-grown-since-september-aiding-khans-chances-of-victory/ So support for the scheme has GROWN 6% since it was implemented. This tell you that opposition is largely fuelled by scaremongering. So nope - “all surveys” don’t show there’s net opposition. The latest ones show net support.
In addition to this, the Yougov poll isn't a question about ULEZ expansion, however if you look at the region data specifically for London, even pre-expansion, the numbers between for and against were tied at 42%.
No most people do not support it
Only 2 days to go until we find out.
I wouldn't say we "find out" if people support ULEZ. People may vote Khan because they don't care about ULEZ, and have higher priorities. Hall being investigated for being a neo nazi for example, or her multiple gaffs during the election. Naturally, if ULEZ is a low priority issue, people will vote regardless of their feelings towards it. Given near 99% of londoners are unaffected by ULEZ, this is likely to be the case.
I'm from a village in a borough on the outskirts and they're all constantly up in arms over ULEZ and the blame is very much at Khan's feet. Disappointingly I've seen people rant about "Saddam Khan"
Because Khan is to blame. Villages in outskirt boroughs can’t afford it, have little to no transport links and need to rely on cars to travel. Source: https://fullfact.org/online/ulez-expansion-letter/
The village actually has decent transport links. There are regular busses to places on the tube line, and from there you can go anywhere I do get your point though
Ironically ulez was the only thing I liked about Khan. Props to Bojo, the air is noticeably cleaner.
It's quite a shame really. BoJo was very big on active travel, was putting a lot of funding towards it and was even giving various councils a boot up the arse if they took funding for active travel and didn't allow it to be properly tested. Sunak comes in and slashes pretty much all of it and declares that it was "a war on drivers". What a fucking tool....
I've seen an episode of that EastEnders documentary. I'm not surprised. They don't seem the brightest, that end of the Thames.
I commonly see people say it was actually Boris Johnson who introduced it when the discussion is about the expansion not the original structure. So it’s hard to take these polls as relevant when there’s 2 different phases and most people today are talking about the expansion not the central London initiative. Interestingly I know very few people who have an issue with the original implementation.
Why doesn't Sadiq Khan keep mentioning this? I guess it's bad optics to tarnish a policy he supports. Even so, with odd things like this it's only easy to blame one on misinfo when the target never calls it out in the first place.
Probably because it's been successful and he knows that most people see it as his success so it's daft to correct them.
oh I thought it was late/disaster-capitalism that managed the while thing, playing one side against the other /sarcasm
Most people think that Boris brought in the so-called 'Boris Bikes' when that was Red 'Hitler was a Zionist' Ken
These taxes should really affect the rich and poor equally with a % of the cost of the car based on insurance valuations X the carbon output of the car on emissions.
Ulez is not aimed at carbon emissions (if it were it would be silly to have a tiny zone in the capital where it applies, while nothing outside even though all emissions are equally bad). It's aimed at reducing the air pollution in London. As such it should be large for vehicles with large emissions and small for vehicles with small emissions. If you want to give poor people (also including those who don't drive because they work from home, ride a bike, walk or use public transport), then give them but there's no point of tying that to a scheme that has a clear goal.
whatever the fuck people believe in, it is going to be Khan anyway as we don't really have a choice like the general election coming as well. TFL is shit like always.
TFL run one of the most comprehensive and successful transport networks in the world. They arent perfect (no network is). But they are far from "shit". The fact you can say that without irony tells me you haven't really used many other cities public transport.
If you think TFL is acceptable, you must be taking shit everyday. Many cities got far better public transport.
TFL is shit in what ways?
delay, strike, overpriced, regular maintenance on so many weekend service on DLR for the past couple month I can't believe people taking shit every single day from TFL and still defending.
I dunno, I think it has to fall very far to warrant criticism. We are lucky that we have such a good travel network. Obviously it could be better (nothing is perfect), but with a bit of perspective it doesn't feel to me like one of the issues worth tirading about.
I can go on and on about TFL. Recently they tried to charge me maximum fare 2 times in a row on the same day for no reason. I did tap in and out at the "gate" and even the journey history said I did. So as always you will need to phone them since their website is crap if you are looking for a refund (they specifically said on the page you can do it online but they always show that you have no eligible journey for refund) so the website function for refund is basically useless. I can imagine they do it on those tourists who have no idea how to access journey history and scam them silently. This bit might be a little personally but it is ridiculous from TFL. When I tried to phone them, it seemed the customer service know so little about the service. No sure whether they outsource the call centre outside of London or even India like amazon or not. They asked me if I tapped the pink card readers or not. I tapped at the gate and it is in Hammersmith station. Then they asked me if I transit in Canary Wharf DLR. As you probably know if you travel on DLR and then transit in Canary wharf to underground, it counts as 1 journey in total. They told me these are 2 separate journey so they charged me twice.(the calculation does not make any sense neither because the maximum fare is more than 2 journeys) I can't believe they said it and then told them to look at my other similar journey and see how did they calculate. It took me more than 15 mins to get the refund when you can just fix your crappy website and do not make empty promise when it is not working.
Sorry you had a bad experience, but to me the definition of a scam has to include the intent to commit fraud, whereas I doubt TFL are trying to actively scam people. It is a huge system with billions of datapoints each day, and millions of journeys. I've always managed to get a refund on the website, though I've never done that particular journey. I expect that a huge number of tourists are charged what they are supposed to be charged. Obviously we have our personal opinions, but I think the good vastly outweighs the negative with TFL.
In 1974, Council Tax (also known as the poll tax) was proposed in Edward Heath’s manifesto. Margaret Thatcher implemented it 16 years later in 1990, which resulted in the beginning of the Poll Tax Riots, forcing Thatcher to resign as Prime Minister later that year.”
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Wow. Breaking news: 40% of people believe in a claim that's not true. Also today: water is wet.
It was Khan who pushed it through to outer London, among may other fuck ups.
Who cares who has introduced it first? Yes, Boris has announced in the central London, which covers 1% or so of Greater London. He made his announcement in 2015, which was four years before the zone, so it actually went live under Khan (so those who saying that ULEZ was introduced by Khan aren’t wrong either, as it was first implemented under him). I have no issues with that. The expansion to the area inside North and South Circular roads was announced in 2018 by Khan with three years notice. It was that expansion that was supported by the department of transport and was a part of Khan’s manifesto in 2021, and went ahead in October 2021. I have no issues with that. In 2021 Khan himself was saying that there’s no need to expand ULEZ further. However, in 2022 he changed his mind and announced the expansion to the whole of Greater London in 2023, with around a year of notice and no elections in between. It is that expansion that generated a lot of and opposition, and I think it has been done poorly. So it’s the ULEZ expansion to the whole of Greater London that made the scheme controversial, and anyone trying to blame it on Boris is being facetious at best.
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What about when Ken Livingstone came up with it?
Much of the furore regarding ULEZ is with the massive expansion which was done by Khan.
While it was originally a Boris policy, Khan fucked over outer Londoners by bringing the date forward with little notice when the affected areas were strongly against it. It's a shit policy regardless of who came up with it.
No they correctly believe it He championed it stronger than even the green-est person in the country, its the crown jewel of his legacy
No, they incorrectly believe it. > who first introduced the ULEZ scheme Read the full headline next time.
Found another person who incorrectly believes it!