Yossi Mekelberg
The extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone to the Greater London boundary came into effect late last month. For about one in 10 motorists in London, this means they are now subject to a £12.50 ($15.64) daily charge for driving within this boundary. It is obviously a hefty increase in cost, especially for heavy users of noncompliant vehicles, and, worryingly, it hurts most those who cannot afford to replace their environmentally unfriendly automobiles, including tradesmen who rely on their vehicles to make a living. This situation has not been helped by the sharp increase in car prices, new and used, largely due to supply chain issues and rising labor costs.
Yet, all of this does not negate the fact that imposing further restrictions on highly polluting cars is a necessity. There are well-documented benefits to excluding high-emissions cars from our streets. But this does not exonerate introducing restrictions without taking full account of their impact on certain segments of the population, especially those who are economically worse off, without adequate provision to mitigate the impact on them. As societies, we do not have a memory of life without cars, nor of the scale of the pollution that has been the result of their use. Pollution issues are especially crucial in big cities and, in a metropolis such as London, the degree of pollution can make a huge difference to the quality of life, and to life expectancy itself. It is a great shame that an issue that should never have been turned into a partisan political squabble has been cynically exploited by the Conservatives – and only because the mayor of London comes from Labour’s ranks. It should never have become another climate change battlefield between the two main political parties, especially not at the expense of the well-being of those who live in or visit one of the most attractive cities in the world.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has had to defend the expanding ULEZ not only from Tory critics, but also from some members of his own party following Labour’s loss in the recent by-election in Greater London’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. Ironically, this is the constituency of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, under whose London mayoralty ULEZ was conceived. The public can sometimes have a short memory when it comes to politics and, in this case, some politicians are taking full advantage of it instead of doing the decent thing and supporting and following the scientific evidence and advice. A report by Imperial College, one of the UK’s leading universities, estimated that 4,000 lives could be saved annually by this measure alone. And the ULEZ in Central and Inner London is projected, according to the city’s governing body, to avoid a million air pollution-related hospital admissions and save the National Health Service and social care sector £5 billion by 2050.
These figures are significant enough for those who live in London and their representatives of whatever political persuasion to unite in supporting a measure that affects the 5 million people who live within the restricted zone and promote such zones in other cities. Instead, the controversy has previously seen the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, push the pause button on his city’s Clean Air Zone program for fear of a backlash. However, London is far from the only UK city that has taken the route of low emission or clean air zones. In places such as Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Oxford, Glasgow, Sheffield and Bradford, similar schemes have gone through with little opposition. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that a capital city always attracts more attention and is a natural political battlefield, with its corresponding minefields. An additional explanation is that the scrappage scheme for motorists owning high-polluting vehicles fell short and left too many people out of pocket, which made them feel that they alone had been left to pay for improving everyone else’s air quality.
This resulted in some people resorting to vandalizing or stealing the hundreds of cameras installed to enforce London’s new low emission measure. Unfortunately, and not without reason, there is still a very strong sense that introducing green policies and transitioning to a green economy is still too punitive and not enough about encouragement, benefits, rewards and ensuring that the process is affordable for everyone. While the impression might be that to meet the ULEZ standards one should have invested in some fancy electric car that most Londoners cannot afford, in reality there are much cheaper options, at a cost of a few thousand pounds, and what was required was a scheme to match the available second-hand vehicles with those who own vehicles that do not meet the emissions standards. This could have reduced resentment toward ULEZ, the current mayor of London and the Labour Party.
However, as we are at a point where the vast majority have now accepted, and even internalized, that climate change and global warming are increasingly hazardous to our well-being and very existence, there is a need to think more about integrated and clean transport systems, rather than just about cars. Cars will continue to play an important part in our lives. Some like the very idea of them, and are even obsessed with them, while others simply use them because they enable mobility. But in the grand scheme of moving people and goods from one place to another, they are far from the only answer – and this is especially so in the megacities, where we spend more time in traffic jams than moving toward our destination. Last week, a taxi driver told me very proudly that he could complete a full shift of 11 hours in his brand new electric vehicle without a single charge. On the downside, in all these hours he traveled a mere 100 miles, an average of less than 10 miles per hour, and mostly carrying a single passenger. At the same time, millions of people are carried by cleaner public transport and even cleaner cycling, which in London can often be quicker than driving.
With a general election just around the corner, one can only wish, albeit with a good measure of skepticism, that the major political parties, their leaders, aspiring parliamentary candidates and activists, when it comes to environmental issues such as ULEZ, will look for common ground. At the end of the day, who does not like to breathe fresher and cleaner air and to avoid the unnecessary illnesses derived from polluted air?
