Sadiq Khan’s hated Ulez expansion across Greater London had no impact on air pollution, a new study by scientists at the University of Birmingham has found. The Mail has the story.
Sadiq Khan controversially expanded London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez) two years ago, at an estimated cost of up to £155 million.
Now, a breakthrough study suggests that fervent opposition at the time was well-judged.
Scientists at the University of Birmingham say the expansion of the Ulez in August 2023 had no significant impact on lowering air pollution.
In addition, London still faces air pollution levels well above international health-based guidelines, according to the experts.
Campaigners are now calling for Ulez to be scrapped altogether as it is saddling “Londoners with mountains of debt”.
“This is just further evidence that the Ulez expansion was about raising money rather than improving air quality,” Thomas Turrell, Transport and Environment spokesperson for City Hall Conservatives, told the Daily Mail.
“This is exactly what TfL’s own modelling showed, but yet again, Sadiq Khan is ignoring the evidence when it doesn’t suit his agenda.”
Damning figures released in 2023 showed how the Ulez expansion generated a whopping £5.3 million in its first week alone – with millions more raked in from drivers since.
Introduced in April 2019, ULEZ allows authorities to charge diesel and petrol vehicles £12.50 per day for operating in London if they are not compliant with emissions standards.
It uses a network of cameras that snap a photo of a vehicle’s plates, which searches a database to check if it is compliant, and, if not, issues a fine to the owner.
Ulez was intended to reduce vehicle emissions in some of London’s most polluted areas, but the decision to expand it to areas where traffic is less dense two years ago proved controversial.
It means the Ulez now applies to all 32 London boroughs, covering over 1,500 square kilometres (580 sq miles) and around nine million people. The zone pushes right up to the borders of surrounding counties including Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.
The new University of Birmingham study focused on two harmful pollutants called nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM2.5 – which refers to fine particles with a diameter 2.5 micrometers or less, invisible to the naked eye. …
According to the findings, there was a 19.6% reduction in NO2 at roadside sites in central London within three months of Ulez originally being introduced in 2019.
Meanwhile, nitrogen oxides (NOx) – the wider group of toxic gases to which NO2 belongs – fell by 28.8% in the same period for the same area.
However, no significant impact was detected on NO2 or NOx levels following the Ulez expansion in August 2023.
What’s more, PM2.5 pollution across the whole of London has not significantly fallen over the entire period – not just since 2023.
Unfortunately, NO2 and PM 2.5 (fine particles that can enter into our lungs) pollution in London remains well above guidelines from the World Health Organisation (WHO).