From the article: Starting next August, drivers of the most polluting vehicles will have to pay $15 per day to enter an Ultra-Low Emissions Zone expanded to include all of metropolitan London, the British capital’s mayor announced Friday.

“Cleaner air is coming to Outer London,” Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted. “Today I’m announcing that we’re expanding the #ULEZ London-wide in a move that will bring cleaner air to five million more Londoners.”

“Our city is being smothered by toxic air—and it’s hurting and killing Londoners, leading to asthma, dementia, and even cancer,” the mayor continued. “Air pollution particles have even been found in the livers and brains of unborn babies. We cannot stand idly by and allow this to continue.”

“Around 4,000 Londoners die prematurely each year because of long-term exposure to air pollution, with the greatest number of deaths in outer London boroughs,” Khan added. “That’s why this expansion is so important—we need to clean the air for everyone.”

London Public Health Director Kevin Fenton tweeted that “air pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health in the U.K… It affects everyone who lives and works in London, and its impacts are felt throughout the life-course from before birth to old age.”

The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:

From the article: Starting next August, drivers of the most polluting vehicles will have to pay $15 per day to enter an Ultra-Low Emissions Zone expanded to include all of metropolitan London, the British capital’s mayor announced Friday.

“Cleaner air is coming to Outer London,” Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted. “Today I’m announcing that we’re expanding the #ULEZ London-wide in a move that will bring cleaner air to five million more Londoners.”

“Our city is being smothered by toxic air—and it’s hurting and killing Londoners, leading to asthma, dementia, and even cancer,” the mayor continued. “Air pollution particles have even been found in the livers and brains of unborn babies. We cannot stand idly by and allow this to continue.”

“Around 4,000 Londoners die prematurely each year because of long-term exposure to air pollution, with the greatest number of deaths in outer London boroughs,” Khan added. “That’s why this expansion is so important—we need to clean the air for everyone.”

London Public Health Director Kevin Fenton tweeted that “air pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health in the U.K… It affects everyone who lives and works in London, and its impacts are felt throughout the life-course from before birth to old age.”

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/z9o3zu/cleaner_air_is_coming_as_london_expands_vehicle/iyhl776/

[removed]

Wow, so it is once again the responsibility of consumers to fix pollution. This fee should be leveled against companies who produce the polluting vehicles instead of people who bought them. Consumers are not infallible. We don't have the time to research every implication of every product we buy. It is much more reasonable to have a company research the implication of each product they make, instead.

This sounds a lot like the conspiracy theories from 2005. People warned us that the Government will seek to tax breathing itself. Carbon Tax is just another way of stealing money from individuals, it's big brother vs. the people.

They're taxing the thing which is stopping us from breathing freely in order to reduce it and improve air quality, this is a good thing for the people of London who are suffering from air pollution

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a chance to live in London with asthma; whilst this is very much a stick rather than a carrot move, all of our lungs will do substantially better for it.

How is that relevant? All new cars sold in EU (and I guess UK) already comply - this applies only to older cars

Guess you haven’t thought of the fact that they’ll just pass this on to the customer anyways. You literally cannot force companies to pay their share in taxes since it all comes from their customers anyways. It all comes back to the consumer.

And before anyone says that they can just make it illegal think of it this way. If there was no customer than there wouldn’t be any money for taxes. Nobody is getting taxed unless they actually sell something, which requires a consumer. Also nothing is stopping a company from raising prices to counter taxes, unless you want to regulate prices but that hurts everybody.

More like cleaner revenue. Will people change their habits enough to decrease pollution? Why would the oil lobby allow this?

“Vehicle pollution fee” or “Stop poor people from driving fee.”

And its is not like we have been offered a lot of viable options, right? Shame on the whole industry.

£12.50 rather than $15 since that is the currency of the UK.

Every petrol car sold in the UK since 2006 wouldn't have to pay this fee so it really is just keeping old polluting bangers off the road.

Diesel is 2015 so only 7-8 years there but given particulates and NOx in old models this seems pretty pragmatic to me.

I used to live in London 25 years ago and it was a dirty, grimy, not-particularly-pleasant-smelling city back then.

A couple years ago I had to chance to visit and I was shocked at the change. It’s still a dirty, grimy, not-particularly-pleasant-smelling city, but all the Pret-a-mangers had been replaced by LEONs.

You think so? I thought London was beautiful, modern, clean. My favorite city.

And if you drive there from a foreign country, you need to pre-register your vehicle with them, otherwise you'll get a daily fine that they will chase you for. Source: first hand experience...

Just jokes! It is a lot cleaner than it used to be, you’re right.

during the worst financial crisis of the last decade they put in place extra costs for people forcing you to either pay because you have an older car or spend thousands on a newer car, when the reason you would probably have an older car is because you can't afford a newer car. Fuckers.

Poor people drive old cars. Rich people got subsidized to buy new electric cars.

Same with solar, wealthy people could afford the installation on their homes and took advantage of decent subsidies and electricity rates. Poor people couldn’t afford to do that.

I get that subsidies help the transition toward cleaner energy, it’s a shame that poorer people don’t really benefit so much from them.

If you didn’t tax externalities what would you tax?

The real answer is not the fee itself.

It’s the strong encouragement the fee incites to switch to electric vehicles.

If you make companies pay more taxes/fines for selling high polluting cars, they sell less cars. This has already been proven with US CAFE regulations. The companies will even make EVs or ultra-high-efficiency gas cars just to be able to sell luxury inefficient cars also. So the taxing does work to change company behavior.

In the EU, there are so many small cars with high efficiency engines. Even in the USA, they do make the Prius and cars like it. Its not like you have to drive a Dodge Ram Pickup rolling coal.

Ya that sucks for people who can only afford the old car they have.

You know what else sucks even more? 4000 people dying a year from pollution. Cars need to be disincentivized and public transit/bikes needs to be funded and incentivized. A fee to pollute the air other people have to breath seems relatively minor compared to people dying because of the pollution.

> People warned us that the Government will seek to tax breathing itself

But this is literally taxing the thing that makes breathing difficult.

Are you doing okay?

If they really wanted us in fuel efficient cars they could have phased out the gas guzzlers long ago and developed decent mass transit.

How is it an encouragement to switch to electric when pretty much the majority of cars are exempt from the fee?

My car is as basic as they come and is 15 years old with over 150,000 miles on it. It's a good example of what a poor person drives and it's exempt from the charge. People with cheap, old cars won't be affected by this. Owners of classic cars, performance cars or Chelsea Tractors will have to pay.

And by "old" you really mean "classic". My fifteen year old, 150000 mile bucket-on-wheels is exempt.

If you play SimCity, you'll learn the time for Mass Transit is when the city is first developing. To tear up the city and put in mass transit later is really expensive.

The conservatives have been fighting against high efficiency vehicles since oil companies first started bribing them.

LOL!! Because pollution thats pays 15 bucks knows to stop at the clean air border.

Except we had a decent infrastructure for mass transit with the trolley cars and rail lines when the cities were built, they tore it all up to put in roads and parking lots.

Putting aside the fact that the fee should be scaled with earnings - it's almost like as if cars weren't that good and there was a viable alternative called public transport. Metal boxes on wheels cause cities more costs then this fee will ever give back. Having a car costs a lot and if you are poor and have one it only keeps you in poverty. If you want equality then we can ban all driving in city centers - I am all for it.

Yes. You are so right. Having a means of transportation is clearly the reason they are being kept in poverty. Based on your reasoning capacity it couldn’t possibly be anything else. Good call.

Yet for people that cant afford to get a new one they continue to pollute the air and the fine does nothing to help. This policy is going to screw many people over. The old lady with her old car she uses to go the shops once a week or see some friends. The working class person in an HMO that uses it to get to work and back for nightshift. The low paid social worker that has to go to multiple houses. There is a cost of living and housing crisis people do not have savings let alone a spare 10k for a reliable car.

It's definitely not helping them get out of poverty. Driving a car in London is basically asking for problems.

Interesting. What is the reason for that exemption?

You're conveniently forgetting option #3, take the bus. London has one of the greatest mass transportation networks human beings have ever created.

The new tax makes owning an older vehicle less cost efficient than buying a newer vehicle.

Exactly my thought. Same with plastic waste, consumers shouldn’t be solely responsible for the recycling of materials. Company’s need to be held accountable for products and their entire life cycle, not just to the shelf.

True, the only thing I can think of that would still be relevant would be if you were to drive somewhere outside of London. You could get the train if there was a station where you were going or you didn't have a time constraint.

Or if you were driving into London from outside you still have to pay to get into the city and then park I before you can get the tube

[removed]

Literally every petrol car sold since 2006 is exempt. London also has great public transport and they’re expanding public transport frequency in outer London in coordination with this move. How is there a lack of options? People will just regurgitate ‘why do regular people have to make the changes’ even when policy makers have done every last thing to make it as painless as possible.

> they could have phased out the gas guzzlers long ago

They have, gas guzzlers are taxed in the U.K. and the car industry is on notice that new petrol cars are banned from 2035 onwards. As a result the U.K. car market has shifted to offer many small efficient city car options.

> and developed decent mass transit.

We are talking about London, U.K. here. It’s literally had highly developed mass transit since at least the Victorian age.

This scheme literally offers up to £2k scrappage to upgrade car - again you just need to find a used car manufactured less than 17 years old. Wheelchair accessible cars get up to £5k scrappage.

All the criticisms people are talking about have been addressed in great detail in the scheme.

Sorry, I am in the US and such measures are few and far between. My town has one bus service that runs a continuous loop, one taxi service that you have to book in advance, so not having a car really limits your ability to be spontaneous. Also we have lots of tradespeople who have heavy duty vehicles who face no penalties for their fuel use. Don't even get me started on the construction equipment, city vehicles and delivery trucks hogging the road.

I hope things improve, I’ve seen a lot of positive noises from the US so hopefully there’s a movement building!

The trades vehicles point is interesting, it seems like in the US they all use heavy trucks, whereas in Europe the norm is vans like Ford transit.

Oh yeah, I can understand some trades require heavy duty lifting over rough terrain, but every yahoo with some extra bucks seems to think it is a mark of status to get themselves a fancy rig that guzzles the gas. I drive a 2003 Honda Element that meets all my needs, least I can do to keep it real.

Well Euro 4 petrol came out in 2005. So any petrol after that is exempt. Would be my guess at the comment.

It's badly implemented though. It's only on Euro rating, not actual emissions.

IE a 2000 Honda Insight. 1L 3Cyl Hybrid, is euro 3, as euro 4 didn't exist. Has to pay. A 2005 Civic Type R, is exempt because its euro 4. Yet puts out 3 x the co2, more nox,and more pm.

That Insight is cleaner than a euro 6 diesel! Yet its written off as a more polluting vehicle! There will be plenty more examples, that's just once I've come across.

It has nothing to do with efficiency (mpg), it's only to do with emissions.

A 5L Supercharged Range Rover is very poor efficency, around 15mpg. Yet its Euro 6. Despite being the the worst tax bracket (based on co2) there is.

This is definitely some ESG stuff right here. Soon it won’t be vehicles but individual people also will be subject to these conditions. Social credit score type stuff

There really needs to be a reckoning for those behind the Dash to Diesel campaign of the 00s

This seems like an automobile version of sweeping homeless people old cars owned by people who can't afford better off of the streets.

Owner of a 15 plate "luxury ish car".

£12.5 to pay if I go there.

ULEZ is about keeping the working poor off of the roads.

It doesn't discourage oversized single occupancy vehicle use.

It doesn't encourage public transport/EV use.

It simply charges people who cannot afford a new car (petrol/gas newer than 2005ish, diesel newer than 2016ish, 50% of cars sold 2010-2016 where diesel in the UK, and where previously encourage as the environmentally friendly/economic option).

Would like to remind US posters that cars in the UK are heavily taxed, and our wages are far lower on average than most US cities, even in London, ~$30-40k is average, so simply upgrading is a difficult option for many.

There's public transport at least.

Doesn't have to make sense. Just another scheme.

[removed]

Finally, a sensible comment, a couple of other things to add for non-UK residents:

Fiestly is how well maintained cars need to be to pass the regular MOT vehicle checks required to drive on UK roads, so even if someone is driving a small 2000-2010s diesel (as was recommended at the time) it's not belching clouds of smoke, and is generally mechanically pretty healthy.

And secondly how a large proportion of the vehicles affected by this zone-embiggening are actually vital secondary modes of transport for families who already primarily use public transport. I grew up in (an admittedly better-connected suburb of) London and while most families made use of trains/buses/tubes for commuting, school, and habitual travel - they all had a small/medium sized car for ad-hoc things like a big weekly food shops, transporting bigger loads, and all the routes that are just plain bad to do on public transport - London's rail is a hub and spoke model which sucks more the further out you go (trying to get from spoke to adjacent spoke).

Now almost all of those families, who have been carefully maintaining their car for the few trips they need (including those who's kids have flown the nest) need to buy new cars to continue.

Oh boy more laws that disproportionately affect poor people and minorities while the rich are utterly unaffected very pog

[removed]

You watch, Politicians and government cars will be exempt.

I wouldn't say unaffected. They'd had paid more up front for that newer vehicle. They can probably afford it, but still..

“I can only afford this thing that poisons and kills people”, is not a good justification, especially if the consequence is just a charge.

You don’t need £10K for a reliable car. You can get a decent ULEZ-compliant vehicle that will stay working for a fifth of that. Mid 00s Civic springs to mind.

At least London has public transport options, personally I find the implementation here in Glasgow to be more heinous as the city serves a large portion of rural Scotland, and commuting options outside of a car are just non-existent. The measure posed here is also more stringent with far less exemptions & a larger fine. In one of the poorest cities in the UK.

For me working just south of Glasgow city centre I’m a 35 minute drive, costing about £6 in diesel both ways, or a 1 hour 15min train with a £14 on peak return cost.

I believe Manchester had similar issues but their local authority was surprisingly able to listen to reason & scrapped the plan.

[removed]