London’s ULEZ must be fair and effective or risk reversal
THE CLIMATE is changing rapidly. We saw that with the heatwaves that swept the country and the fires raging in Europe. But climate action can’t steamroll over people, or make them poorer as an economic crisis sets in. Well-meaning but unfair policies will, after all, eventually be unwound. No policy is a better example than London’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone.
The idea of limiting cars in the city is rooted in real concern for the well-being of Londoners. Air pollution caused 40,000 deaths in the UK in 2019 – around 4,000 of which were in Greater London.
Orginally under consideration under Boris Johnson’s tenure as Mayor, ULEZ was introduced in 2019 and expanded beyond Central London by Sadiq Khan. ULEZ has reduced the city’s nitrogen dioxide levels by a few percentage points. But its impact on Co2 emissions is still unclear. TfL’s own report says it is “difficult to definitively attribute changes in emissions” to the ULEZ.
What’s certainly true is that the zone is no panacea. Researchers are clear that a ULEZ on its own is not an effective strategy to improve air quality – it works best when combined with a broader set of policies to reduce emissions across sectors such as bus and taxi retrofitting and support for active and public transport.
Worst of all, the policy is deeply inequitable. It hurts poorer and older people who live outside of Central London and have fewer public transport alternatives. I’ve heard countless stories of people who now struggle to drive their elderly relatives to events or go on a job without incurring higher costs than they can afford.
This will only erode support for ULEZ and other climate politics.
The first step is to make the policy more accurate. We need to track mileage of cars driven rather than whether or not they enter the zone. For those who drive their cars only sparingly, popping over the ULEZ for a short errand, this will adjust costs down.
The Mayor argues we are decades away from being able to do this and so has simply proposed to expand the ULEZ. But it is possible to use GPS to track journeys, a feature most cars will soon have. The challenge then becomes one of coordinating an update to multiple software vendors.
Another quick route, before all cars have in-built GPS, could be to incentivise people to install their own technology. This would provide accurate data and reduce costs. Think of a ULEZ app on your phone similar to CityMapper or even Google Maps. TfL could then build an IT service that would capture the data and process it for payment.
This also presents a great opportunity for London’s many startups. And as cities around the world look to limit car use, there ought to be ample opportunity to promote a public-private package of software solutions that is “Made in London” and seen to work in the world’s greatest city.
It also cannot be right that poorer drivers are penalised the most, relatively speaking, as they inevitably are under a regressive policy like ULEZ. The policy already operates with many exemptions – for the disabled, patient transportation, but also for charities. An easy step would be to create a “pop-in” tariff for those whose cars are registered right on the border of the zone and need to make short, limited journeys.
Why not go further? Making the policy means-adjusted is unlikely to have a large impact on the city’s pollution. Any shortfall in revenue could be made up by increasing charges for large companies.
Combating pollution isn’t just a global campaign or something affecting people who live elsewhere. Pollution is killing Londoners and reducing their quality of life. But the right policy response is one that addresses the problem while bringing all Londoners along on the journey.
THE CLIMATE is changing rapidly. We saw that with the heatwaves that swept the country and the fires raging in Europe. But climate action can’t steamroll over people, or make them poorer as an economic crisis sets in. Well-meaning but unfair policies will, after all, eventually be unwound. No policy is a better example than London’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone.
The idea of limiting cars in the city is rooted in real concern for the well-being of Londoners. Air pollution caused 40,000 deaths in the UK in 2019 – around 4,000 of which were in Greater London.
Orginally under consideration under Boris Johnson’s tenure as Mayor, ULEZ was introduced in 2019 and expanded beyond Central London by Sadiq Khan. ULEZ has reduced the city’s nitrogen dioxide levels by a few percentage points. But its impact on Co2 emissions is still unclear. TfL’s own report says it is “difficult to definitively attribute changes in emissions” to the ULEZ.
What’s certainly true is that the zone is no panacea. Researchers are clear that a ULEZ on its own is not an effective strategy to improve air quality – it works best when combined with a broader set of policies to reduce emissions across sectors such as bus and taxi retrofitting and support for active and public transport.
Worst of all, the policy is deeply inequitable. It hurts poorer and older people who live outside of Central London and have fewer public transport alternatives. I’ve heard countless stories of people who now struggle to drive their elderly relatives to events or go on a job without incurring higher costs than they can afford.
This will only erode support for ULEZ and other climate politics.
The first step is to make the policy more accurate. We need to track mileage of cars driven rather than whether or not they enter the zone. For those who drive their cars only sparingly, popping over the ULEZ for a short errand, this will adjust costs down.
The Mayor argues we are decades away from being able to do this and so has simply proposed to expand the ULEZ. But it is possible to use GPS to track journeys, a feature most cars will soon have. The challenge then becomes one of coordinating an update to multiple software vendors.
Another quick route, before all cars have in-built GPS, could be to incentivise people to install their own technology. This would provide accurate data and reduce costs. Think of a ULEZ app on your phone similar to CityMapper or even Google Maps. TfL could then build an IT service that would capture the data and process it for payment.
This also presents a great opportunity for London’s many startups. And as cities around the world look to limit car use, there ought to be ample opportunity to promote a public-private package of software solutions that is “Made in London” and seen to work in the world’s greatest city.
It also cannot be right that poorer drivers are penalised the most, relatively speaking, as they inevitably are under a regressive policy like ULEZ. The policy already operates with many exemptions – for the disabled, patient transportation, but also for charities. An easy step would be to create a “pop-in” tariff for those whose cars are registered right on the border of the zone and need to make short, limited journeys.
Why not go further? Making the policy means-adjusted is unlikely to have a large impact on the city’s pollution. Any shortfall in revenue could be made up by increasing charges for large companies.
Combating pollution isn’t just a global campaign or something affecting people who live elsewhere. Pollution is killing Londoners and reducing their quality of life. But the right policy response is one that addresses the problem while bringing all Londoners along on the journey.