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Ignore ULEZ scare stories – it will reduce traffic and save lives

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CROYDON COMMENTARY: Some 80% of vehicles in Croydon are compliant with requirements of the Ultra Low Emission Zone and so will not incur charges. If we want to improve London’s toxic air quality, doing nothing is not an option, says PETER UNDERWOOD

Air quality control: ULEZ reduces traffic, and pollution. Croydon’s Mayor Perry opposes that

Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, has announced that, from August, the Ultra Low Emission Zone will be extended to cover almost all Greater London including, for the first time, most of the borough of Croydon.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement extending the ULEZ has prompted a backlash from the car and road haulage lobbies, pretending to represent residents while spreading misinformation and outright lies.

This has then been continued by the Conservatives in Croydon and the Liberal Democrats who control Sutton Council, who are saying they will try to obstruct the introduction of the ULEZ.

The noticeable thing about the opposition to ULEZ is that these groups never offer any sensible alternatives to reduce traffic and pollution.

The first thing we need to be clear on is that doing nothing isn’t an option.

London’s main roads are grinding to a halt. Lorries and speeding rat runners are now using our side roads as cut-throughs, putting lives at risk to save them a couple of minutes on their journey.

The climate emergency means we have to cut fossil fuel use. That means a drastic reduction in the use of petrol and diesel.

Health experts have already made clear that pollution caused by traffic shortens the lives of thousands of us every year and harms our children’s lungs for the rest of their lives. Following a courageous battle by her mother, in 2020 Ella Kissi-Debrah who lived in Lewisham became the first person in the country to have air pollution officially listed as a cause of death. I fear she won’t be the last.

Pro-pollution: Croydon Mayor Jason Perry

Jason Perry, the Mayor of Croydon, says that instead of ULEZ, he wants to see improvements in public transport. But it is his Conservative Party colleagues in government that are refusing to fund the public transport we need in London. Where is his protest against insufficient government funding for London transport? Where is his threat to legally challenge Conservative government cuts?

The LibDems in Sutton are no better. It seems odd for them to oppose the ULEZ locally when their London Assembly members voted in favour of it.

Ruth Dombey, Sutton’s council leader, in announcing her opposition to the ULEZ roll-out, said, “We all understand the importance of clean air and recognise the impact pollution has on the lives of people living in our city.”

But how can we take this seriously when she has spent so long defending the Beddington incinerator that she allowed to spew pollution into our air for decades to come?

Opponents to ULEZ often claim to be standing up for the poorest people, but this is clearly not true. The poorest can’t afford a vehicle. As we saw from the recent census, more than one-third of Croydon residents and nearly one-quarter of all Sutton residents don’t live in a household with access to a car or van. They still have to breathe traffic pollution and have their lives put in danger by too much traffic.

So why would stopping the ULEZ benefit them?

The Green Party know that ULEZ isn’t perfect but we have been working to improve it and we have put forward sensible alternatives.

We have been listening to Londoners who are reliant on their vehicles and our Green London Assembly members helped win concessions and funding to help disabled people, and a scrappage subsidy scheme aimed at low-income Londoners, charities and small businesses.

Greens have also shown the Mayor of London how we could improve public transport and give people better alternatives to driving, even under current budgets. Sadly, the Mayor has not adopted them and instead has gone along with Conservative government demands to increase prices on buses – exactly the opposite of what we should be doing.

Misinformation: a less-well-informed demo against ULEZ in Trafalgar Square

For years, Greens have also pushed for a smarter, fairer road charging system to be introduced. Instead of the ULEZ flat rate charge, this would be a charge based on how polluting your vehicle is, how far you drive it, and the charge would also be lower if you only drove in areas with lower levels of pollution.

Last year, we finally achieved a change in the Mayor’s transport strategy enabling the future development of this policy. So this fairer system will hopefully replace ULEZ in years to come.

The groups who oppose the ULEZ are spreading a lot of scare stories, but remember that this is only an expansion of the existing ULEZ.

There are millions of people who already live in the ULEZ zone. They still go to work, their children still go to school, they still go shopping and they still do all the things the rest of us do. More than four out of five vehicles already meet the emissions standards (you can check yours using the TfL vehicle checker) and so the vast majority of people won’t ever pay the ULEZ charge anyway.

A few years ago I decided to live without a car. It has saved me a fortune. Why spend money on tax, MOT and insurance on something that spends the vast majority of its time just parked. With the ever-rising cost of fuel, most journeys are cheaper on public transport. I know a family in the current ULEZ zone worked out that it would be cheaper to stop owning a car and just hire one for the occasional days when they do need to drive. Even those people who have kept their old cars have cut down the number of days they drive to reduce the amount of ULEZ charge they pay.

Overall I don’t think the ULEZ is the best system, but it is a move in the right direction.

It is clear that we can and must change our lifestyles to cut our car use. Just like being required to wear seatbelts or being prevented from smoking in public buildings, it will take time to adjust. But over time, it will save lives.

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