For Londoner Beau Boka-Batesa, air quality has drastically improved in the British capital following the rollout and expansion of a contested car pollution toll two years ago.
Now, Boka-Batesa, 21, feels like Londoners can walk down a high street and “not cough as much.”
“It’s so much more evident that things aren’t as bad as they used to be,” said Boka-Batesa, who cofounded the Choked Up campaign group for young, ethnic minority Londoners living in areas of high pollution.
Photo: AFP
UK researchers and campaigners have hailed the effectiveness of the toll in improving London’s air quality.
The Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) — the world’s largest pollution charging scheme — was implemented in central London in 2019, before expanding to Greater London’s 9 million residents in 2023. It requires motorists to switch to low-emission vehicles or face a daily charge of ￡12.50 (US$16) for driving a polluting car within the zone.
Its expansion saw fierce opposition from outer London residents, with local councils launching unsuccessful legal challenges and hundreds of ULEZ cameras vandalized by disgruntled people.
While many are still holding out against the policy championed by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, others are resigned or have even accepted its benefits.
A study published by Khan’s administration last month showed a significant drop in air pollution compared with a scenario without ULEZ, including 27 percent lower levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide gas emitted from vehicle exhausts across London.
About 97 percent of London vehicles were compliant with low emissions standards as of September last year, compared with 39 percent in 2017.
However, according to music business owner Roger Tichborne, some polluting car owners are simply being shut out of the capital, with residents on the outer edges avoiding coming into London.
Since ULEZ was expanded to his Mill Hill neighbourhood in northwest London in 2023, his studio business has seen a 15 to 20 percent drop in bands coming from outside the zone to use his rehearsal space.
“They’ve just stopped coming, because it’s too expensive,” Tichborne, 62, said, adding that his adjoining music shop had taken a 30 percent cut in business.
Like many outer London residents, Tichborne has also resorted to measures like taking longer detours in his Ford Galaxy diesel car to avoid ULEZ cameras and charges.
Alongside ULEZ, Khan had introduced a “scrappage” scheme providing financial support for replacing non-compliant cars. However, Tichborne said that changing cars was still too expensive.
The music studio owner accused Khan of providing insufficient help for small businesses and musicians — many of whom rely on older, polluting vans to transport their equipment.
“When you design measures that are going to affect large amounts of the population, you have to do it in a way that you don’t kill businesses,” he said. “My issue with it is not the fact that the air is cleaner. My issue with it is the fact that it’s badly implemented.”
While he is still opposed to the scheme, Tichborne conceded that “people in London have, by and large, changed their cars or learnt to live with it.”
For Boka-Batesa, “transparency and open communication” were necessary to “ensure that people’s needs are at the forefront of it all.”
The scheme had the capacity to “both narrow and exacerbate inequities,” another study into the impacts of ULEZ on children’s health published last month showed.
While some outer London families struggled to replace cars or switch to public transport, the report found that more elementary-school students were choosing “active” modes of traveling to school, such as cycling and walking.
“Introducing a clean air zone, in particular ULEZ, has wider societal benefits,” said Christopher Griffiths, senior author and professor at London’s Queen Mary University.
“It goes beyond just cleaning the air, it’s about how we live,” Griffiths said.
Respondents from deprived areas who reported living in the most polluted parts of central London experienced the “greatest impact of reduced pollution levels,” the study said.
The “data is clear that the ULEZ has delivered a massive improvement in air quality beyond what was expected or predicted,” Griffiths said.
ULEZ, France’s under-threat “Zones a Faibles Emissions” — and more than 300 similar “clean air schemes” across Europe — are vital solutions, he said.
“They’re the one public health tool that we have that is being shown to be effective,” he added.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS