All change 2025.

[andyinluton]

Londoners escaping the city in their cars already contribute enormously to the greater UK economy - have you visited Cornwall or the Cotswolds recently?!
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Exactly - if you can afford the fuel for a Range Rover a few quid extra for a pollution charge isn't going to make a jot of difference.
Why should they get away with paying nothing for a pleasure trip whilst the lowly worker gets charged for having the impertinence to drive an aging van carrying his tools to work?

 

[Amarillo]

Health benefits is just an excuse to raise money. If it was about health all none compliant vehicle should be banned, paying the £12.50 doesn't make a vehicle any cleaner...

If it was truly about emissions there are other measures that could be introduced to reduce them, get rid of speed bumps, link traffic lights etc to keep traffic flowing smoothly rather than stop start.

I don’t wholly disagree with your analysis about the health benefits. But I do think that health benefits have are connected with the mayor’s decision. I think he was affected by the inquest into the death of Ella Kissi-Debrah which found that air pollution was a cause of her death.

But I also think the ULEZ is viewed as a route to making drivers pay for using London’s roads now the Government will be withdrawing all financial support for TfL.

It cannot be right that tube and bus passengers pay more for London’s roads than those who drive on them in private vehicles.

 

[Amarillo]

Why don't we just charge any car driving Londoner escaping out of the North / South circular a large fee to contribute towards upgrading the transport network outside London.

I think if we had a vote on it there would be an almost unanimous decision, of course Londoners wouldn't be eligible to vote as this is a matter concerning those that don't live in London.

Simple reason. They already pay for roads outside the Capital through fuel duty and VED, a well as general taxation, none of which will be returned to TfL.

 

[andyinluton]

It cannot be right that tube and bus passengers pay more for London’s roads than those who drive on them in private vehicles.

Looking at the TFL business plan very little of the money spent on roads in London is for the benefit of private motorists, it’s all about improving bus lanes and cycle lanes - if more money is needed for that, using your argument that those using the roads should be paying, surely it’s time to raise the bus fares and tax cycles in London.

 

[Amarillo]

Looking at the TFL business plan very little of the money spent on roads in London is for the benefit of private motorists, it’s all about improving bus lanes and cycle lanes - if more money is needed for that, using your argument that those using the roads should be paying, surely it’s time to raise the bus fares and tax cycles in London.

The cost of the Silvertown Tunnel alone is £1.2Bn plus an estimated £1Bn for running costs over the next 25 years. Cycling will be banned from the Silvertown Tunnel.

TfL’s cycling budget is £770m over five years (£154m on average per year). Cyclists contribute along with pedestrians via the GLA council tax precept (£25.70 to £77.10 according to band).

But cyclists are already tolled to cross the Thames, whereas motorists generally cross for free.

E.g. Hammerton’s ferry £2 + £1 for bike; Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf Ferry £5.40; O2 cable car £6; Woolwich Ferry £Free.

 

[andyinluton]

The cost of the Silvertown Tunnel alone is £1.2Bn plus an estimated £1Bn for running costs over the next 25 years. Cycling will be banned from the Silvertown Tunnel.

TfL’s cycling budget is £770m over five years (£154m on average per year). Cyclists contribute along with pedestrians via the GLA council tax precept (£25.70 to £77.10 according to band).

But cyclists are already tolled to cross the Thames, whereas motorists generally cross for free.

E.g. Hammerton’s ferry £2 + £1 for bike; Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf Ferry £5.40; O2 cable car £6; Woolwich Ferry £Free.

You are clutching at straws there- you have used examples that are not even available to motorists.

So what you are really saying is that in addition to all the same free crossings that the motorist has, cyclists and pedestrians have all these further options……

 

[Amarillo]

You are clutching at straws there- you have used examples that are not even available to motorists.

So what you are really saying is that in addition to all the same free crossings that the motorist has, cyclists and pedestrians have all these further options……

Cyclists are permitted through the Rotherhithe Tunnel free, which has the ferry directly above, but I would strongly advise against it.

The Blackwall Tunnel is almost directly below the Cable Car. Cycling is banned in the Blackwall Tunnel while cars transit for free.

Cycling is banned in the Woolwich Foot Tunnel. Both cars and cycles are free on the Woolwich ferry when it is running.

Upstream of the Dartford Tunnel all car crossings of the Thames are free. Cycles are either banned, charged or ill-advised to use any Thames Crossing between Tower Bridge and the Dartford Crossings (with the exception of the part-time Woolwich Ferry).

But you are right, this is a bit of a distraction from your (somewhat impractical) idea of bike lane charging.

 

[WelshGas]

As Kahn et al constantly go on about the supposed health benefits then it is a wonder that they haven’t asked NICE to do an evaluation, in total, of the supposed health benefits , social costs etc of the LEZ expansion on the population affected, ie: the residents of London AND the surrounding counties.

Introduction to health technology evaluation | NICE health technology evaluations: the manual | Guidance | NICE

www.nice.org.uk

 

[GrumpyGranddad]

Looking at the TFL business plan very little of the money spent on roads in London is for the benefit of private motorists, it’s all about improving bus lanes and cycle lanes - if more money is needed for that, using your argument that those using the roads should be paying, surely it’s time to raise the bus fares and tax cycles in London.

Walking back to my van last night in Hyde Park, a cyclist chose NOT to use the brilliant two way cycle lane but to ride along the pedestrian pavement.

Not sure why I’m posting that? Maybe too much wine at Port Solent this evening

 

[wildslammer22]

Looking at the TFL business plan very little of the money spent on roads in London is for the benefit of private motorists, it’s all about improving bus lanes and cycle lanes - if more money is needed for that, using your argument that those using the roads should be paying, surely it’s time to raise the bus fares and tax cycles in London.

Cyclists in London are predominantly high earners and c.30% earn over £75,000 per annum. So it’s safe that through general taxation and that many/most of them also pay VED and a chunk will pay the ‘luxury car’ supplement that we Cali owners are familiar with.

TLDR cyclists already contribute more than average towards cost of roads through their taxation burden.


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[andyinluton]

Cyclists in London are predominantly high earners and c.30% earn over £75,000 per annum. So it’s safe that through general taxation and that many/most of them also pay VED and a chunk will pay the ‘luxury car’ supplement that we Cali owners are familiar with.

TLDR cyclists already contribute more than average towards cost of roads through their taxation burden.


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So as I earn more than £75k living outside London, have a bike, and 2 cars that I pay the luxury car supplement on, are you saying I don't need to to pay any extra to drive in London?

 

[Amarillo]

So as I earn more than £75k living outside London, have a bike, and 2 cars that I pay the luxury car supplement on, are you saying I don't need to to pay any extra to drive in London?

No, but you can take advantage of free cycling. Park somewhere outside the ULEZ and ride. Waltham Abbey, perhaps, and ride the River Lee towpath in. It connects indirectly with the Regent’s Canal so you can get right to the heart of London on a route free from motor traffic. It is only 8.5km or 5 miles to the N Circular, taking about 25 minutes on a bicycle. And the best bit - along the tow path is absolutely flat other than brief downhills at each lock.

 

[The Tall Luthier]

Looking at the TFL business plan very little of the money spent on roads in London is for the benefit of private motorists, it’s all about improving bus lanes and cycle lanes - if more money is needed for that, using your argument that those using the roads should be paying, surely it’s time to raise the bus fares and tax cycles in London.

This is why public transport is so poor outside of London.

In the 80s the Dragon Queen privatised public transport. It had two effects, firstly other countries governments ended up owning our buses and trains (Arriva) and secondly only profitable routes stayed open.

The pattern was the same everywhere outside London, private car usage sky rocketed. Fuelled also by the lowering of prices after the Maastricht Treaty in 1996

The whole point of public transport in other nations is to get people to work at a reasonable price. When you introduce profit then that just isn’t possible, routes close, demand falls, the system shrinks.

Obviously TfL run all public transport in London, it works remarkably well to get most people to work.

 

[wildslammer22]

So as I earn more than £75k living outside London, have a bike, and 2 cars that I pay the luxury car supplement on, are you saying I don't need to to pay any extra to drive in London?

It’s all about you isn’t it


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[andyinluton]

It’s all about you isn’t it


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Not really, more concerned with the guys that work for me as subcontractors, it's not until you've left home North of London sitting 3 abreast in a tatty transit van, spent 2 hours getting to site, paid £35 a day to park, spent £25 a day on diesel to earn a pittance. Probably got a parking ticket once a week have your tools knocked every six months. The extra pollution charge is just the final nail in the coffin.

I know about 50 of the guys I normally use now refuse to go into London at any cost, just means those that will can bump up their rates, so at the end of the day its the Londoner that suffers as everything is just going to end up costing more.

 

[wildslammer22]

Not really, more concerned with the guys that work for me as subcontractors, it's not until you've left home North of London sitting 3 abreast in a tatty transit van, spent 2 hours getting to site, paid £35 a day to park, spent £25 a day on diesel to earn a pittance. Probably got a parking ticket once a week have your tools knocked every six months. The extra pollution charge is just the final nail in the coffin.

I know about 50 of the guys I normally use now refuse to go into London at any cost, just means those that will can bump up their rates, so at the end of the day its the Londoner that suffers as everything is just going to end up costing more.

It’s always been that way though. Londoners have paid more for services etc for decades that’s why London weighting is a thing. It’s also the biggest market so businesses choose to keep serving it they just cut their cloth accordingly.


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[wildslammer22]

This is why public transport is so poor outside of London.

In the 80s the Dragon Queen privatised public transport. It had two effects, firstly other countries governments ended up owning our buses and trains (Arriva) and secondly only profitable routes stayed open.

The pattern was the same everywhere outside London, private car usage sky rocketed. Fuelled also by the lowering of prices after the Maastricht Treaty in 1996

The whole point of public transport in other nations is to get people to work at a reasonable price. When you introduce profit then that just isn’t possible, routes close, demand falls, the system shrinks.

Obviously TfL run all public transport in London, it works remarkably well to get most people to work.

100% this.

Luxembourg made all public transport ‘free’ in 2020. Its financed through general taxation. Clearly much easier to do in a small (and wealthy) country. It does however demonstrate that there is another way.


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[Christine Kirk]

When was the last time you visited a breakers yard?

Years ago vehicles were there because they were riddled with rust or had genuinely reached the end of their economic life. Not so today. Many vehicles are there not because they are beyond economical repair or have become dangerous but because of a consumer driven society that has been conditioned to think that they have to replace their vehicles every three years. Once over that three year mark these vehicles are considered to be on the slippery slope to the scrapper and the sooner the better as far as goverments and industry are concerned.

Older cars don't rust much any more so why not encourage owners to service them properly and if necessary require them to have them reconditioned. Chips or ECUs were produced in the first place so can be again. An alternative industry could flourish with the entirely green purpose of prolonging the life of an object which has already been produced and has therefore long since created it's own manufacturing carbon footprint. Why create even more pollution by first scrapping it and then making another even more resource hungry "environmentally friendly" EV that requires an entirely new world wide infrastructure to support it and it's like? Instead we have incentives like the moronic car scrappage scheme that gets trotted out from time to time. A scheme that has seen hundreds of thousands of serviceable cars scrapped at enormous cost to the tax payer. Why? Because it supports the drive to replace them with vehicles which are apparently so much more environmentally friendly!

As for my current car not lasting forever, well you are right, everything returns to the earth eventually. However, in the mean time I own six vehicles, they are 114, 111, 100, 19, 4 and 4 years old respectively and are all in full working order. The one that gets used the most is my late father's 19 year old Skoda Fabia 1.4 tdi diesel hatch. It has long since paid it's carbon dues, doesn't depreciate, costs very little to run, averages 60+ mpg and fulfills the same function as any other car EV or ICE on a daily basis. Parts are plentiful and ridiculously cheap and it runs like a dream. There is no reason why it can't continue to run for many years/decades to come and yet this is the very sort of vehicle that Governments want us to scrap and replace with new EVs. I sincerely believe that there is a place for EVs but IMO the drive to phase out ICE vehicles in order to replace them with an alternative EV fleet and infrastructure will prove both short sighted and extremely costly to the environment and our pockets.

As for taxing by the mile, yes I have to agree, that will eventually happen. However, if anyone is naïve enough to think that it will replace VED then they should think again. Instead, it will likely be reincarnated as a nominal annual registration fee. That fee will be minimal at first but will steadily climb year by year thus creating another healthy income stream for the exchequer.

Totally agree our fleet is also ancient and works just fine: T4 caravelle we have had twenty one years and is still going strong on its original engine at 278 thousand miles and doesn’t use oil! Servicing is now more expensive since we have to replace parts like suspension bushes but much less than depreciation on a new vehicle, which on even our Cali is thousands a year.

 

[WelshGas]

So it would seem that Londoners one way or another are and will be paying the LEZ chargers themselves for any work tradespeople, who reside outside the expanded LEZ , undertake for them. Those traders who have upgraded their vehicles have passed on the upgrade costs via higher prices and those that haven't have included the LEZ in their invoices, and they can claim this back from HMRC as a working expense.
Over the next few years as non-compliant vehicles reduce in number then TFL will have a drop in revenue and will either have to extend the LEZ charge requirements to Euro6 diesels and Petrol Euro5 or introduce road charging to maintain revenues to subsidise Londoners public transport in the future.

 

[Amarillo]

So it would seem that Londoners one way or another are and will be paying the LEZ chargers themselves for any work tradespeople, who reside outside the expanded LEZ , undertake for them. Those traders who have upgraded their vehicles have passed on the upgrade costs via higher prices and those that haven't have included the LEZ in their invoices, and they can claim this back from HMRC as a working expense.
Over the next few years as non-compliant vehicles reduce in number then TFL will have a drop in revenue and will either have to extend the LEZ charge requirements to Euro6 diesels and Petrol Euro5 or introduce road charging to maintain revenues to subsidise Londoners public transport in the future.

Yes, very nearly correct.

But visitors to London will benefit also as public transport fares are either cut or have below inflation increases. This is because less fare income will be needed to subsidise motorists. It is even possible that the reverse will happen, and drivers will be subsidising public transport - keeping the roads clearer.

 

[Borris]

Totally agree our fleet is also ancient and works just fine: T4 caravelle we have had twenty one years and is still going strong on its original engine at 278 thousand miles and doesn’t use oil! Servicing is now more expensive since we have to replace parts like suspension bushes but much less than depreciation on a new vehicle, which on even our Cali is thousands a year.

Brilliant.

I find it difficult to imagine why keeping a vehicle such as your T4 Caravelle on the road is so bad for the environment. Providing a vehicle is correctly maintained, it shouldn't present a significant environmental issue compared to scrapping and remanufacture. If it had failed it's MOT emissions test or was belching out smoke then of course it should be overhauled or as a last resort, scrapped but that isn't the case with many older cars.

One of the issues that can lead to some people prematurely ending a vehicle's life is the 100,000 mile barrier. Many see this as the point at which they have to get rid. Just look at the Autotrader listings and you will see hundreds of vehicles being advertised with just sub 100,000 miles on the clock. Unfortunately, this way of thinking has almost certainly led to many well maintained cars being scrapped. Trade in values on high milers are often very low so when coupled with dealer incentives, this only encourages owners to think that there old car isn't worth keeping.

Leaving the debatable environmental benefits to one side, I'm sure I don't need to tell you but having a well maintained older vehicle can also be very liberating. My late father's old Skoda is retained on our fleet mainly due to it's usability as a general purpose hack but also because in generates zero stress. We can and do use it for all sorts of jobs that you wouldn't dream of subjecting a valuable shiny new car to. We use it for school runs, a notorious battle ground where many a minor ding regularly occurs, tip runs, collecting logs in a trailer, letting our 13 year old grandson learn how to drive it in a field, to mention only a few. It's also kept on to lend to family members and friends when they have car issues. We never have to worry about who has it or if it should get a slight ding. It's worth next to nothing but still does the job it was sold to do when new. If it isn't an example of truly green motoring then I don't know what is.

Keep your Caravelle going.

 

[wildslammer22]

Brilliant.

I find it difficult to imagine why keeping a vehicle such as your T4 Caravelle on the road is so bad for the environment. Providing a vehicle is correctly maintained, it shouldn't present a significant environmental issue compared to scrapping and remanufacture. If it had failed it's MOT emissions test or was belching out smoke then of course it should be overhauled or as a last resort, scrapped but that isn't the case with many older cars.

One of the issues that can lead to some people prematurely ending a vehicle's life is the 100,000 mile barrier. Many see this as the point at which they have to get rid. Just look at the Autotrader listings and you will see hundreds of vehicles being advertised with just sub 100,000 miles on the clock. Unfortunately, this way of thinking has almost certainly led to many well maintained cars being scrapped. Trade in values on high milers are often very low so when coupled with dealer incentives, this only encourages owners to think that there old car isn't worth keeping.

Leaving the debatable environmental benefits to one side, I'm sure I don't need to tell you but having a well maintained older vehicle can also be very liberating. My late father's old Skoda is retained on our fleet mainly due to it's usability as a general purpose hack but also because in generates zero stress. We can and do use it for all sorts of jobs that you wouldn't dream of subjecting a valuable shiny new car to. We use it for school runs, a notorious battle ground where many a minor ding regularly occurs, tip runs, collecting logs in a trailer, letting our 13 year old grandson learn how to drive it in a field, to mention only a few. It's also kept on to lend to family members and friends when they have car issues. We never have to worry about who has it or if it should get a slight ding. It's worth next to nothing but still does the job it was sold to do when new. If it isn't an example of truly green motoring then I don't know what is.

Keep your Caravelle going.

Plenty of evidence to support that keeping the same vehicle for a long time is actually very good in terms of lifetime emissions. The cars that top the cradle to grave league for emissions are old Landrover Defenders and Jeeps precisely because so few of them are scrapped prematurely.

I have a Landrover with 190k on the clock and it’s not giving up anytime soon.


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[Borris]

Plenty of evidence to support that keeping the same vehicle for a long time is actually very good in terms of lifetime emissions. The cars that top the cradle to grave league for emissions are old Landrover Defenders and Jeeps precisely because so few of them are scrapped prematurely.

I have a Landrover with 190k on the clock and it’s not giving up anytime soon.


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Superb. And there is no shortage of either parts or specialist help with a vehicle like yours so it should be on the roads for decades to come. If emissions regs become too tricky then you could always fit a new engine that does comply, that is if you can still buy such a thing, just not an electric one please. That would be like sticking a battery movement in a long case clock.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all older cars are fit for an extended life. Many will be genuinely uneconomical to repair and rarer models may no longer have the spares availability to support future repair and maintenance. However, many car manufacturers now share standardised parts/spares so given the will to do so, it shouldn't be difficult for them to carry on making and supplying such items.

I also suggest that many but not by no means all, accident damaged write offs could easily be repairable at relatively low cost. These vehicles are often written off merely because the charges that the insurance and accident management companies rack up when dealing with claims, renders them write offs. There just needs to be a change in the way these things are handled. Alas, I can't see that happening.

 

[Amarillo]

Bromley council declare war on TfL

Parking on grass verges and pavements is not tolerated – London Borough of Bromley

Parking on grass verges and pavements not tolerated

www.bromley.gov.uk

And councillors explain all in a contrived interview.

 

[Terachchaayahai]

nice to see this