£12.50 to drive your car - ULEZ coming to Stroud Green

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Comments

  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    Why would they want to stop people paying road tax, insurance premium tax and serious tax on fuel? Or is this simply another way to tax motorists? Some people use vehicles for their livlihood. Some people to see family outside of London, national rail is way too expensive and unreliable and requires a vehicle at the other end anyway. In London if you don't really need a car most people don't bother with one already. Cities should be livable places and that might mean clean air and cycle lanes but taking away people's freedom and adding more inconvenience does not make life easier.
  • Yep, absolutely agree with joust. Transport is brilliant in London on the whole, I love buses.
  • "feel they need to own a car" is a bit telling though, isn't it, and I say that as a car owner. Car driving is artificially cheap compared to public transport because of tax funded infrastructure and that has led to people making unsustainable choices. And I don't think it's true that it's environmentally better to keep an old car any more, though it obviously depends how much you drive it and what you're measuring. Charges like this do disproportionately impact the worse off, I agree,but alternatives like bans or alternating which licence plates are allowed in the zone are more restrictive and can be hit around by the richest, anyway generally speaking.
  • A few comments about the ULEZ being unfair on poorer residents, but worth also considering that air pollution often disproportionately affects the most deprived areas of London - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/19/poorest-london-children-face-health-risks-toxic-air-poverty-obesity . Whilst some people will be worse off I would argue that on balance significantly more residents in poorer areas will benefit than lose out from ULEZ.

    Central government is acting too slow on this issue and Sadiq is correctly using the policy levers open to him to influence behaviour to improve air quality.
  • edited June 2018
  • what joust said and arkady agreed with, with bells on.
  • Central zone proposals I could agree with, but the extension could be run only on a congestion charge style weekday daytime basis, with a £5 discounted charge for residents.

    That would be enough to discourage a huge amount of car use and not make this so painful for those living in the zone.

    It would still nudge more recent car owners into replacing them with cleaner vehicles and not wage a battle on classic car owners.





  • Not sure I can call my 2003 Audi a classic!
  • I have never seen a classic car in N4!
  • There is an amazing Transam at the top of Hanley Road.
  • Completely agree with Joust on this.
  • Miss Annie, I own one and there are another three that I can name regularly parked on Hanley Road alone.
    There's lots of them around.
    A classic isn't necessarily a 1960s or older car. Special cars from the mid-1990s and back are considered classics.
  • Apparently quite a few of the borough s want it extend ed out to the M25
    They are worried about rat running etc around the boundaries. Revenue for TfL looks like it is £2m a day so I guess that might offset the £750m cut that the Government have imposed on TfLs grant
  • Papa L, not by me they're not. Although an immaculate 80s Capri is a thing of joy.
  • Miss Annie, In the classic car world they are.

    I think it's easy to miss how time passes.
    My mum has a 1968 Mercedes, she got it in 1991.
    It was 23 years old - and would certainly have already been considered a classic by then.
    My car is 1991 - 27 years old now.

    Ali, I'll bet the boroughs do - probably haven't asked their residents though.
    I actually think this is something big enough that it should have been put to a referendum across the areas affected. Sadiq didn't explicitly stand on extending the ULEZ with no residents discount - it's the latter that's the real shocker for everyone.

    As an aside, as I was cycling down Hornsey Road this morning, I saw not one but three Islington CCTV cars pass me in swift succession. Clearly the council doesn't see doing its bit for bringing down air pollution as more important than raking in cash from drivers.

    What's always driven me mad about the people in those cars is they regularly can be seen parked on double yellow lines with the engine running.
  • NO MORE REFERENDUMS EVER AGAIN!
    Can't trust the general public.
  • Car ownership in London has been plummeting for years. In 2011 between 60-70% of Haringey households did not have access to a car. If it was put to a referendum I'd bet that car owners would be hammered.

    Given the anti-social nature of cars - the dangers of driving them and the space they take up even before you get on to air-population and carbon emissions- their use should be penalised much more than at present. These proposals don't come close.

    I'd be open to exemptions for those with a genuine case - the disabled for instance.
  • Arkady, I disagree and would be willing to wager that car owners wouldn't be hammered.

    I also disagree with your views on cars, as will a great many people. (Although most likely not the kind of person represented on a Stroud Green neighbourhood forum.)

    I can see why you think that, but I think you're wrong and I side less with prescriptive state-knows-best measures and more with freedom of choice.

    I agree London's air needs cleaning up but also think results could have been achieved with a subtler system that warps outcomes less. Brand new Lamborghini or Range Rover free, 2002 Ford Fiesta £12.50, Miss Annie's mint Capri, £12.50.

    I suspect, however, that neither of us are likely to change our mind.

    Also, my stats the other day were wrong, as I read the wrong chart. Road transport is only 50% of NOx so you can halve those figures - so its 12% contributed by diesel cars and 6% from petrol.

    Report here https://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Policy themes/Environment/Demystifying air pollution in London FINAL FULL REPORT_IM_0.pdf
  • the problem with freedom of choice instead of state control is that you end up with a a right mess as people are mostly selfish
  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    And with state control you end up with North Korea? Some kind of 30 minute walk with a toddler in the cold and rain to a nursery every day. Difficult enough to get to work wothout having to walk or take about 4 different buses via indirect routes will be fun. I guess I could hire a car to go out of town to North of England etc but sad day when banned and option to be spontaneous has been taken away.
  • The problem with too much state intervention is that it often works out bad and has unintended consequences.

    Why do you think so many people are driving diesel cars, causing this ULEZ-targeting NOx problem in the first place?

    Because the state encouraged them too.

    The state should run public services and intervene elsewhere when necessary with a considered and light touch.

    Air quality probably counts for necessary now (thanks to the state's previous bodge) but this is not a considered or light touch, it's more a sledgehammer and nut job.

  • edited June 2018
    I travel around the country, sometimes at very short notice. I have also travelled that length and breadth of other countries - inc. the US, without ever driving. Car owners make out that it is some hideous ordeal to go anywhere without a car. It isn't.

    I just checked and you can get a train ticket to go to York tomorrow (randomly picked somewhere that someone might spontaneously go) for under £60 return if you're a bit flexible with timing. Would be £30 in advance or with various railcards, company booking accounts etc.
  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    What if I want to go to a rural location with a family and a ton of junk? Like a trip to rural Lancashire followed by a wedding in North Yorkshire back to Lancashire to pick up child and back to London. Very easy in a car or hire car. Instead of effectively fining people who were previously told to buy the vehicles being fined because they are environmentally friendly perhaps some incentives to buy electric cars would be much better.
  • the goal is to have fewer cars in London, not different types.

    plus, i'm from (very rural) north Yorkshire, and have spent the last decade managing quite well to get back home using a train or a hire car.
  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    Yes it is clearly possible to live without a car and survive. However I like cars. Cars create jobs in the UK we still make a lot of them. They make my life better in my opinion. Air quality is a problem but it can be solved. If everyone jumped on a train it would be much harder to buy a ticket. The idea everyone can use a bicycle or public transport will be like living in Mao's communist China. Create effectively a tax cut incentive to get people clean don't hit them with a stick after lying to them previously.
  • You're building arguments against things that people aren't saying.

  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    Self therapy.
  • grennersgrenners Ferme Park Road, N4
    Definitely a shocking amount of anti car arguments on here.
  • The detail says that they don't really want you to pay the charge, i.e. not revenue raising, but the idea is to reduce pollution. The Mayor has clearly realised the air quality is terrible in London, (brought about by previous tax incentives and an aim to reduce CO2 which has had unintended poor air quality consequences).

    In my view, London stinks of diesel compared to New York (way more than it used to), though no doubt our CO2 emissions are top notch.

  • I would quite like Gordon Brown to post a comment regarding his incentives and propaganda regarding diesel car ownership
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