The mayor of London has finally announced that, from August, London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) will cover the whole city.
This has been the call from Green Assembly Members since 2016 and is a major step forward for clean air protection. But more action is needed to make our city truly green and fair for everyone.
A week before the announcement, the London Assembly approved changes to the mayor’s transport strategy, enabling this policy and the future development of smarter, fairer road charging to be part of City Hall plans. But it was not without controversy, with Conservative members protesting loudly against the new measures.
I believe we need the strongest possible action on pollution, as well as action to reduce other harms caused by allowing our streets and public spaces to be dominated by traffic.
As the current chair of the transport committee, I helped this summer to bring a strong cross-party voice into the campaign against cuts to buses, which helped win a stunning reprieve for almost all these vital services, including the 88, 24 and 4 that serve our area.
And our committee also worked hard to bring voices into our chamber from groups of Londoners who are reliant on the car, and who will need more time and help to replace their vehicles. From our recommendations to the mayor on the ULEZ, we won new concessions and funding to help disabled people, and a large new scrappage subsidy scheme aimed at low-income Londoners, charities and small businesses.
Any policy programme to cut car dependency and driving kilometres must also include improvements to the other options people need to get around. This means the revenue generated from any scheme like the ULEZ must be used to make buses better and more frequent, to create welcoming streets for cycling, and to design liveable neighbourhoods for children and older people to spend time safely, without pollution, traffic and road danger getting in the way.
It also means not raising transport fares in our budget plans in the new year, and this is set to be our next big debate at City Hall. Those who argued against new charges for those driving the most polluting vehicles must now become the loudest voices against raising costs for those young people, older people and the millions of Londoners on the lowest incomes who rely completely on public transport.
Sian Berry (Green Party) is a London Assembly member and a Highgate councillor.
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