Sadiq Khan’s bid to extend the Ulez to the whole of London has generated the city’s very own culture war.
Four Tory-controlled outer boroughs and Surrey are locked in a courtroom battle with the Mayor on a range of challenges about the process of extending the policy. Cameras put up to monitor compliance have been vandalised and stolen. Claims have been traded about the validity of academic research into the impacts of Ulez.
Meetings have been disrupted. A potential Conservative candidate for next year’s mayoral election has pledged to abolish the Ulez expansion “on day one”.
Ulez started life in central London in 2019, having been initiated by mayor Boris Johnson. It then expanded to the North and South Circular roads in 2021 and will expand to the Greater London boundary on 29 August this year. The charge is £12.50 per day, with charging in operation 24 hours a day.
Transport for London is operating a £110 million scrappage scheme which allows lower-income households and small businesses to apply for cash to pay to replace non-compliant vehicles.
London has a history of tackling pollution of different kinds. In the 19th century Sir Joseph Bazalgette built sewers to clean up the Thames. Following the killer smog of 1952, legislation was introduced to curb the burning of coal.
The Thames Tideway tunnel is being constructed to reduce sewage overflows.
For Khan, the decision to extend Ulez is political and personal. As an asthma sufferer, he has his own experience of the impact of air pollution. He also believes there are equalities issues: low-income households, many of them from minorities, are more likely to live on polluted roads than better-off residents.
But opponents say that despite the scrappage scheme, the charge will hit the less well-off hardest and outer London has a far less extensive public transport than inner. Even with the “Superloop” of buses linking centres such as Bexleyheath and Croydon, outer London will remain a far more car-dependent place.
The Tories put their opposition to Ulez expansion front-and-centre in their campaign to hold Uxbridge & South Ruislip in the by-election. The next mayoral contest could well become, in part, a referendum on Ulez expansion. Boris Johnson abolished the western extension of the congestion charge zone in 2010.
Few things are more personal-political than cars. They symbolise everything from freedom to selfish individualism. Mega-cities depend on government interventions to allow the trade-offs required when millions of people live together in a vast area. Ulez has become a political battle like few others.
