Sadiq Khan’s Ulez expansion to outer London failed to lower pollution levels, a report has found. The Telegraph has the story.
Bromley Council measured no “overall lowering in pollution” in the months after the Mayor expanded his £12.50 daily charge zone to cover the whole city last year.
The partly rural borough, which is the largest in London, saw pollutants emitted by vehicles increase after the charge was imposed on August 29th 2023, a report by the council’s environment committee said in June.
It found that in November last year, three months after the Ulez expansion, levels of pollutant nitrogen dioxide were higher across all the borough’s 32 air quality monitoring locations than they were in the preceding August.
The increase was blamed on “seasonal weather and temperature variations” and only eight of the locations saw more nitrogen dioxide in December 2023 than in August that year.
However, when comparing the data with 2022, the report concluded: “What cannot be seen at present is an overall lowering in pollution levels that can be directly attributed to the implementation of Ulez in outer London.”
The report added that the pollution levels in 2022 it compared its recent data with may have been artificially suppressed by the after-effects of Covid restrictions. The last major pandemic restrictions on travel were removed in July 2021.
It comes as City Hall maintains its own research, released in July measuring the success of the Ulez expansion in reducing air pollution, proves the scheme is working “even better than expected”.
The report measuring pollution across the capital released by the mayor’s office claimed that exhaust emissions from cars in outer London were estimated to be 22% lower than without last year’s expansion.
Worth reading in full.
In other news, Transport for London (TfL) has been forced to issue an apology after using “made-up” data inflated tenfold to justify a multi-million pound upgrade to a major roundabout.
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Well who could have forecast that …..? All the experts stated the key reason to do this was to improve the air quality. And yet, it hasn’t worked!
This might lead a cynic with the ‘unfortunate’ impression that this was actually a tax grab all along, as opposed to a public health initiative. Surely not?
” that this was actually a tax grab all along,”
Or maybe also a Trojan Horse to bring in the constant surveillance that will be needed for pay per mile. Also, simply another measure to take away the joy and freedom of motoring, making driving a stressful and unpleasant experience and thus cutting back on the number of cars and motorists. Why would you need a car in your wonderful joyous 15 minute city from hell?
Death by a thousand cuts against the motorist, whether it’s ULEZ or narrowing roads and widening foot paths so two cars can no longer pass with ease, I see the latter everywhere. Surely not a plan!
Not a tax grab, not a health issue but simply a control matter.
I would hazard a guess that the majority of the general population – and everybody reading the DS – knew that ULEZ wouldn’t reduce pollution and its primary purpose was always to extract more money from people and increase control and surveillance.
ULEZ reduces pollution to the same extent as communism liberates the proletariat.
I recently went into a Clean Air Zone in another city. Imagine my disappointment when I would down the window to take a deep breath of clean air, only to find its exactly the same as the stuff outside the zone. What a swizz…
They must think our heads button up the back…
Wait
Perhaps it is just a money-grab?
No
Can’t be
Haven’t commented for a while, having little to say.
But what a bunch of ***** these people are.
Why does “we are thinking of your health” always involve ripping people off, taxing them and lying? From chocolate bar sizes to the sugar tax, Ulez to Net Zero; it seems arbitrarily expensive to simply be alive and then they ravage your corpse of all funds when you finally die in desperation. Meanwhile, those making the rules break them and get extraordinarily rich whilst doing it.
The article begs a question: who do you trust? Bromley Council run by the Conservatives or a lying little Socialist [insert suitable word here]? Well, it isn’t Sadsack Khant is it.
Don’t think I would trust either. I am aware that there are a few good eggs left around the corpse of a once Conservative party.
Of course it hasn’t. But it’s done wonders for TfLs financial position, which was the main reason for it.
Charging drivers to emit nitrogen dioxide will no more reduce it than not charging.
The theory of Pigou Taxes (so-called internalising externalities) in order to change behaviour has never been shown to work. The money collected is never used to correct the externality, just more for greedy politicians to spend, and Humans usually find a work-round.
The air, like the climate, is not in a state of stasis, so concentrations of elements in it will vary with time, place, weather conditions, and other events.
So called ‘air quality’ standard is a function of measuring equipment,
In any case the alleged health problems from nitrogen dioxide in typical concentrations is notional. In the countryside there are many more natural ‘pollutants’ (pollen being one, dust from agriculture, particles of detritus and fæces from avians and insects) more irritant to those with respiratory problems.