One Year On “Fantasy” ULEZ Report Shows Little Change

A new report examining the impact of the ULEZ expansion scheme paints a “fantasy” of London’s air quality, says the local London Assembly Member.

The 221-page unauthored report relies on estimates, guesses, assumptions, and a model of what London may have looked like without ULEZ to suggest that London air quality in some instances may be “up to 4.8%” cleaner. 

Despite the 7-year trend showing that emissions in London were decreasing in any case due to improvements in technology and the growth of electric vehicles, the Mayor of London’s report attributes responsibility for the drop to the ULEZ expansion, citing how emissions would be higher if ULEZ had not been implemented. 

In some of the report’s tables, for example, motorbikes have had to be included in the figures just to show a noticeable change in emissions yet have been omitted in others. Despite costing hundreds of millions of pounds, the ULEZ scheme may have only improved air quality in some cases by “up to 4.8%”, the report says with no certainty. 

This comes after similar concerns from last year’s ULEZ report showed that the Mayor’s claim that air had become cleaner as a result of ULEZ relied on using central London data which had no pre-ULEZ benchmark to be compared against. 

To date, unpaid ULEZ fines debt has stretched to north of the £376m revealed in November, now representing the vast majority of bad debt held by Transport for London. Some vehicles have accumulated tens of thousands of pounds worth of fines which remain uncollected.

London Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley, Thomas Turrell AM, who is also a Councillor for Hayes and Coney Hall commented:

“The Mayor is supposedly comparing these results to a London where the ULEZ scheme didn’t happen, as though we can accurately measure such a thing. How he can say that ULEZ is responsible for London’s air clearing up with a straight face is beyond me – the data relies on maybes, possibilities, assumptions, and straight-up fantasy to justify a project that is saddling TfL and Londoners with mountains of debt.”

“When TfL can’t even point the cameras in the right direction and end up having to write off fines for people who’ve been issued penalties incorrectly, it beggars belief that they think they can accurately measure data for a world without ULEZ that simply doesn’t exist.”