ULEZ is about fleecing the motorist.
There is an argument that as demand increases, so those supplying will increase their prices to limit demand - a concept which many think it's a good one.
Arguably, given car use had gone up a significant amount in the last 30, 60, 90 years that this is just "market forces" being about the increase in cost to the supply side of road use.
Of course cars aren't the only way to get about, that may have been taught to people as a child as they were driven nearly everywhere and now they are an adult they believe this is the case.
The reality is that walking, cycling and public transport are viable options for more trips (not necessarily all, but certainly more) than many will use them for.
As an example, weather is often cited as a reason but to walk, yet even on nice days parking near schools is just as bad as it always is.
I find it hard to listen to politicians promoting the idea of improving air quality when simultaneously they are advocating the construction of massive amounts of urban housing to cater for population growth.
I simply don’t believe Khan is serious about improving air quality. It’s also notable that London’s large bus fleet is hardly good from a pollution point of view, something which is within Khan’s direct control. Indeed as someone who has cycled in London on occasions I find emissions from buses to be amongst the most invasive.
On an individual vehicle basis buses aren't great (although as others have noted there's a shift away from diesel buses), however a bus is often carrying 20 times the number of people as a car would and so the per person emissions are a lot lower. In addition a bus takes up the same road capacity as 2 cars, take that bus away and replace it with 20 cars and congestion would be even worse, causing even more pollution.
So this is purely for London's air quality ? Nothing to do with reducing emissions from all vehicles, reducing particulates across the entire country, and nothing to do with climate change targets ?
This isn't an incentive. It's punitive.
Which is more honest ? Allowing people to pay to pollute and gaining income from it or actually doing something about the issue ?
Don't worry, we can pollute and screw the planet for the next 50 years or so. Not my generation and not my problem, certainly not my parties term either.
The ordinary focus is for sure quality, however the side effect is that it also reduce carbon emissions.
How is it punitive? For those vehicles which aren't exempt (about 10%) they have a large charge to pay, certainly. However, there's a loophole which is fairly easy to take advantage of - buy a vehicle which isn't subject to the charge. This year been on the cards for a year (so about 1/3 to 1/5 of the time many people own a car for), however given that the old zone had the same rules then it's not unreasonable to expect many to have been thinking about having the right sort of car increase they needed to go into the old zone.
Yes some may have thought that they would have had a bit more time, or that they didn't ever go near the old zone. However, given that other cities have brought them in, the direction of travel has been clear for some time.
Pay to pollute isn't ideal, however either the charge is low (so people will do this as it's not going to really impact their finances) or its punitive? Which is it?
Certainly very few people are going to pay over £10 a day (on top of their other motoring costs).
However it certainly gives people the chance to get to the point where EV's are more affordable whilst still getting rid of the vehicles which will cause the most public health issues due to their emissions.
If course, my point above about people being taught that cars are the only way to get about also comes into play. £10/day over 200 days would be £2,000 - more than enough to buy an ebike for work for one year whilst still having access to a car a home. (Clearly few would do this, even though the second and subsequent years use of the ebike would be nearly free - other than charging cost which would be far lower than that of a EV car).
