Blame it on the Ulez
An ambitious policy to clean up London's air is being blamed for a Labour party loss in the outer boroughs
In February 2003, then London mayor Ken Livingstone introduced a new charge of £5 per day on motorists entering central London. Two decades on, the congestion charge is an unqualified success. City transit regulator Transport for London (TfL) credits it with boosting public transport and other modes of sustainable travel, funding buses and people-friendly infrastructure like protected cycle lanes, and of course improving traffic congestion in the capital. That’s not to say central London isn’t congested, but much less so than if the policy weren’t in place.
Congestion pricing is not only accepted in London, it’s popular. Per a June poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies, a majority of Londoners support or strongly support the £15 daily fee on motorists entering the busiest part of the city during peak hours.1 Compare that to New York, which has spent the better part of this century trying to get congestion pricing in motion. Blame lack of political will, blame dull and incompetent public messaging, blame New Jersey, that armpit of America, which has sued the federal government in its latest effort to block the plan.
But we are not here today to talk about New York congestion pricing or even to complain about New Jersey. We are here because despite the broad popularity of congestion pricing, a second policy designed to curb auto emissions in the capital is being widely vilified after the Labour party lost an election last week in outer London.
The policy in question is the Ultra Low Emission Zone, or Ulez. The first thing you need to know about the Ulez is that it’s a lot bigger than the congestion charge zone. That big green blob in the map below? That’s the Ulez. The second thing is that it’s about to get even bigger.
While London has come a long way since the Great Smog, its air quality until recently still ranked poorly among European cities. The main pollutants of concern in the UK are fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), primarily from vehicular emissions and commercial heating systems. PM2.5 is a major health concern as the microscopic particles can travel into the lungs, cross into the bloodstream, and harm the brain and other organs. The European Environment Agency considers air pollution the “single largest environmental health risk in Europe and a major cause of premature death and disease,” led by high concentrations of PM2.5 in urban areas.
“An essential measure to help improve air quality in our city, protect the health of Londoners, and lengthen our lead as the greatest city on earth” –Boris Johnson, 2015
In the UK, air pollution is linked with nearly 40,000 annual deaths, nearly a quarter of them in London. The effects are especially severe in children, but are increasingly thought to be tied to dementia in older people as well. Toxic air disproportionately harms poor communities and people of color, who tend to live in closer proximity to areas of high roadside pollution. Beyond the human costs are the financial ones. By one estimate, the “social cost”2 of pollution from road transport in London was £10.3 billion a year ($13.2 billion) in 2020, well ahead of any other European city.
Despite its current association with London mayor and Labour party member Sadiq Khan, the Ulez was dreamed up by none other than former London mayor Boris Johnson. In 2015, the Johnson mayoralty announced the “world’s first” Ultra Low Emission Zone would take effect in London from September 2020. Vehicles traveling in the existing congestion charge zone would have to meet tighter emissions standards or pay a daily charge. Johnson made the announcement, which included £65 million in government funding to help cabbies transition, at a Coventry factory slated to produce cleaner taxis. “The world’s first Ultra Low Emission Zone is an essential measure to help improve air quality in our city, protect the health of Londoners, and lengthen our lead as the greatest city on earth,” Johnson said, four years before he would be elected Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader, five before he would “get Brexit done,” and eight before he would declare the Ulez “sheer bone-headed cruelty” in a column for the Daily Mail.
The Ulez came into force under Sadiq Khan a year earlier than Johnson proposed, in April 2019. The daily £12.50 charge applied to drivers in the congestion zone whose diesel engines didn’t meet the “Euro 6” emissions standard, as well as most petrol cars over 14 years old. In its first two years, the Ulez cut nitrogen dioxide pollution in central London by nearly half. The share of compliant vehicles soared from 39% before the policy took effect to more than 80% after. In October 2021, the Ulez expanded 18-fold, to an area bounded by the North and South Circular roads and covering 4 million people, 44% of the London population. In November 2022, Khan announced a further expansion of the Ulez to all London boroughs and an additional 5 million people from August 29, 2023.
It’s this now-imminent Ulez expansion that became a flashpoint in last week’s parliamentary by-elections. (A by-election occurs when a member of parliament vacates their seat between general elections.) Conservative Steve Tuckwell narrowly won in Uxbridge, a suburban town in the West London borough of Hillingdon and seat previously held by Boris Johnson, despite the Tories losing two safe seats elsewhere in the UK. Tuckwell ran a single issue campaign, less for the Conservative party than against Sadiq Khan and the Ulez expansion.
Since the defeat, Labour leader Keir Starmer has wasted no time in blaming the Uxbridge loss on Khan and the Ulez, which is certainly easier and more convenient than doing any amount of party soul-searching. Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, a London mother whose daughter died at age 9 in 2013 in part from air pollution, accused politicians of turning the Ulez into a “political football.” Khan, for his part, has said he’ll look at additional ways of mitigating the impact on Londoners, like making subsidies to get a compliant car available to more people, but isn’t budging on timing. The cameras are being installed. The mayor of congested Milan is cheering him on. Everyone is awaiting a high court ruling, expected as soon as this week, on a challenge by the outer London boroughs to the Ulez expansion.
Since 2019, the Ulez is credited with reducing nitrogen oxide emissions in London by 23%, and PM2.5 emissions by 7% across the city and 19% in the Ulez itself. The air quality improvements are “above what was predicted for the scheme,” the mayor’s office said in a report this February, and have persisted even with the return of traffic coming out of the pandemic. Revenue generated from Ulez charges—£226 million in the 2021-22 fiscal year with a net income of £111 million—is reinvested back into London’s transport network, but this is not designed to be a permanent funding stream. The mayor’s office projects that net revenue will stop by 2027 as most people switch from polluting to emissions-compliant vehicles.
Cleaner air, healthier people, better public transport—these are undeniably all good things. The problem is that they are hard to measure and see tangible impacts of, especially for someone staring down the barrel at new fees of £12.50 a day, up to £4,550 a year (even the Ulez takes Christmas off), to drive their car. Khan has done his best to soften the blow. There are exemption phases for disabled drivers, wheelchair accessible vehicles, and community transport buses run by nonprofits. There is a £110 million “scrappage scheme” that gives grants of up to £2,000 in cash or £3,000 in combined cash and transit benefits to eligible car owners looking to scrap or retrofit their vehicle. Similar grants are available for motorcycles and wheelchair accessible vehicles.
The Redfield & Wilton survey that found a majority of Londoners support the congestion charge also found a majority support the Ulez and think it has improved air quality in the city. A plurality (47%) of all Londoners were in favor of expanding the Ulez, but opinion in the outer boroughs was evenly split, with 39% for and 39% against. This makes sense. These are the people for whom things are about to change. Who may need to pay more in what is already a severe cost of living crisis. Who may need to change commuting patterns they would be far more comfortable keeping the same. Of course some of them don’t like it.
These concerns are important, but they are not sufficient. The climate crisis is here. Forests are burning. Islands are burning. The oceans are too warm. Cities and towns are far too warm. Extreme heat is literally killing people. The coming decades will require lots of changes and uncomfortable decisions. Many lives have been disrupted already and many more will be. Now is the time to be using every available tool to combat air pollution and emissions, not to back away from it. Congestion pricing and the Ulez are the best kind of tools because we already know they work. These policies accelerate the shift to cleaner vehicles and more sustainable transport modes, reduce harmful emissions, and keep communities safer and healthier. They are a change and as with all changes they require getting used to, but the evidence also suggests that once people adjust they get on board. In both London and Trondheim, Norway, public opinion shifted in favor of congestion pricing and opposition dropped once people had a chance to actually experience the policies. These are the leaders we need: not those who shy away like Starmer, but ones like Khan who persevere in the quest for cleaner air, healthier people, and better public transport, knowing that just because something is unpopular today doesn’t mean it will be that way forever.
Charges apply 7am to 6pm weekdays and noon to 6pm weekends and holidays, except for Christmas and the New Year’s Day holiday, which are congestion freebies.
“Social cost” includes the cost of premature death, hospital treatment, lost working days, and other health impacts of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide.
Very well written argument as ever, with lots of interesting info (e.g. I didn't know that BoJo was the one who'd come up with the scheme!). Another angle to emphasise when considering pollution and financial impacts for a given scheme is the difference between passenger vehicles and goods vehicles. Road/vehicle policy is often presented as primarily affecting private motorists, forgetting the potentially significant impacts on supply chains. How do vegetables reach the greengrocer's / supermarket on a daily basis? They come in predominantly diesel-powered vans and lorries which have a longer life-span than your typical passenger vehicle, and which, though they represent a smaller absolute number of vehicles, create heavily outsized pollution footprints (from exhaust and tyre wear). And yet everyone, not just private motorists (who tend to be the wealthier population segments), implicitly relies on them for the functioning of commerce and services. Moreover, this kind of transport cannot be so readily substituted with public transport options and cycling, or mitigated with demand reduction. One solution to this pickle is to concentrate available support budgets towards smaller businesses which use older and expensive-to-replace delivery vehicles; but I don't really know about the London vehicle population or what existing policies are in place so happy to be corrected.