Drivers have been fined more than £322 million after Sadiq Khan’s controversial Ulez expansion to the whole of Greater London, new figures show. The Telegraph has more.
Nearly 1.8 million penalty charge notices were issued between August 29th last year and the end of June, according to analysis of Transport for London (TfL) statistics.
The value of these at the point of issue was £322.8 million. TfL’s penalty charge notices carry a fine of £180 each, reduced to £90 if paid within 14 days.
The organisation’s figures suggest it received approximately £176 million from drivers who did pay Ulez fees over the same period.
It previously said all money received from the scheme was “reinvested into improving London’s public transport network”, such as expanding bus routes in outer London.
Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, made the low-emission zone almost four times larger, covering all the capital’s boroughs, in August last year.
Mr. Khan said the move, which created the world’s biggest pollution charging zone, was “a difficult decision” but vital to tackle air pollution. …
Steve Gooding, the Director of Motoring Research at the RAC Foundation, said: “These eye-watering numbers beg the question whether the rules and consequences of the ultra-low emission zones are clear enough, particularly to those not routinely driving into London.
“If the objective is compliance to deliver cleaner air, then TfL needs both to focus on whether its messaging is sufficiently clear, and whether the 14 million payments it received for non-compliant vehicles is saying something inconvenient about the economics and practicality of getting more drivers into more modern, more expensive but cleaner vehicles.”
Research published by City Hall in July found that NOx emissions from cars in outer London were 13% below a scenario where Ulez was not expanded.
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