London ULEZ: ‘Sadiq Khan wants to steal the last few years of my life with £12.50 charge’
The expansion of ULEZ by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has been met with a lot of pushback. The ultra low emission zone already covers most of London but under the plans of the expansion, the £12.50 daily charge will be imposed on any vehicle entering the outer limits of the capital if it does not comply with the emission standards.
The worry about the expansion is that it will exclude people from London and make it hard for those living outside London even more difficult to come into the city. When we posted this article about the expansion potentially “being blocked in court”, this attracted a lot of comments from concerned readers. Many spoke of how the expansion that comes into force from August 29 will see them stop coming into London.
One of our readers, Harleychevymick said: “It makes everybody living within the boundary a prisoner and their vehicle useless. We don’t “choose” to go into London. I, for instance, live 1.5 miles within the boundary and only ever go out, but I will have to pay because my vehicle will be seen on camera, so a total of three miles and charged for a whole day. OK if spending the whole day polluting and earning, but not if you spend about three to four minutes and a pensioner.”
“I also only travel through greenbelt, downs, commons and farmland, my weather app always states the air quality as excellent,” they added. “We also have little to no buses, no Underground, no trams and sod all useful trains, not enough population to warrant them. This is the last car in my lifetime, and he wants to steal the last few years of my life. It’s barbaric!”
Another user wrote: “My husband and I both live just outside London and both work in London. My husband works in Wandsworth and has to start at 6.30am. There is no way he will ever get to work at 6.30am using public transport, he needs to take three buses and they don’t start running that early! We both bought diesel cars after listening to the Government’s advice a few years ago and now, surprise, surprise, neither of our cars are ULEZ compliant.
“My road tax is only £35 a year but my car is still not compliant. My husband has been forced to buy a new (second hand), petrol car, from the money we were saving for our retirement. His car tax is still over £165 a year, but it is now compliant (at the moment). I can get to work on the bus, it is six miles, but it takes an hour and 15 minutes.
“I can drive there in 20, so people using public transport is not always a viable option. This is just a money-grabbing scheme that targets working-class people – people who yes, have a car, but have perhaps had the car for a long time – and people who cannot afford to buy new cars.
“There aren’t many reasonable new cars out there for under £20-£30k. We have worked all our adult lives, we haven’t claimed anything from the state and now we are getting close to retirement, we are being forced to either pay extortionate amounts of money to go to work to serve the public – we are both public servants working for local authorities – or give up work.
“We don’t get benefits, we don’t qualify for scrappage or a bus pass or whatever and we didn’t get a say in voting the Mayor in, yet we are being dictated to by someone who has nothing to do with us and who is totally oblivious of or ignorant to the opposition to his scheme or the hardship that it will cause the vast majority of everyone that is affected.”
Campaigners from the group Action Against ULEZ are planning to bring a legal challenge to the expansion plans but the Mayor said he “hopes they can defeat any legal challenge”.
Some users said they will stop coming to London entirely due to the expansion of ULEZ. A user wrote: “I will shop outside the ULEZ and no longer spend my money in Richmond, Kingston, Croydon or Greenwich and all those tourist spots.” This was followed by another person saying that as a pensioner, “it’s going to be hard to save money to change cars.”
