New emission zone

[Sp!ke]

I'm surprised this topic hasn't come up much yet here or anywhere else. This really seems to have been snuck in with some vehicles falling foul in Feb 2008.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/lez/vehicles/2535.aspx

I have been toying with buying a camper-van but have discovered that come 2010 I'd have to pay £200 a day each time I drive it from my house. Even a diesel transit will fall foul of this - perhaps some people carriers too.

The majority of my local council vehicles, dust carts, street cleaners, gritters etc etc will also fall foul of this and the cost will no doubt be passed straight down to the council tax payers.

Small businesses and big businesses alike will also have to pass the cost down to the consumer. Foreign registered vehicles it seems might get away without the charge as cross border enforcement is sketchy at best.

I really don't think this has been well thought out at all and I'm not entirely sure what its aim is as by far the most common and most polluting of all vehicles I've seen in london are the buses.

 

[jeremytaylor]

I have been toying with buying a camper-van but have discovered that come 2010 I'd have to pay £200 a day each time I drive it from my house. Even a diesel transit will fall foul of this - perhaps some people carriers too.

Not necessarily - read the small print

The majority of my local council vehicles, dust carts, street cleaners, gritters etc etc will also fall foul of this and the cost will no doubt be passed straight down to the council tax payers.

Of course

I'm not entirely sure what its aim is as by far the most common and most polluting of all vehicles I've seen in london are the buses.

"Do as I say, not as I do"

 

[Parrotman]

I really don't think this has been well thought out at all and I'm not entirely sure what its aim is as by far the most common and most polluting of all vehicles I've seen in london are the buses.

Perhaps Red Ken eventually wants ' his ' congestion charge applied to the whole of the inner M25?!

 

[280gee]

Perhaps Red Ken eventually wants ' his ' congestion charge applied to the whole of the inner M25?!

Hmm.. it might just be a pilot scheme for.... nationwide deployment.

 

[Sp!ke]

I recon there'll be a whole load of diesel campervans and going cheap after around 2008/9.... and transits will be virtually worthless in the south.

 

[hawk20]

Won't fairly recent models meet the standards? And cannot older models be modified to meet them?

 

[280gee]

Probably a cynical view but my experience of bike travel all over London tells me that it's all very fine on paper and as viewed from Ken's bunker. But!

As others have opined it's the buses (and taxi's) and other ill-maintained vehicles that chuck out major crud. Until individual real-time vehicle emissions monitoring is implemented it'll be a farce.

Typed to the sounds of.... "Things Can Only Get Better"

I'll get me coat!

 

[mark.t]

convert a old show ground truck

 

[robert.saunders]

Pre-1973 camper would be exempt

 

[TonyVianoAmbiente]

Won't fairly recent models meet the standards?

Yes, all current and recent models meet the standards.

And cannot older models be modified to meet them?

In theory, yes, but it can be very expensive.

 

[kikkthecat]

not sure camper vans / horse boxes come under this rule .........

Yes they do, as do hearses over 2.5 tonnes. See here

Automatic exemptions apply to agricultural and military vehicles though and anything pre Jan 1973. exemptions

Get yourself a tractor and problem solved.

But this is double thievery as the congestion charge still applies as well as the LEZ charge. This has the potential to grind London to a halt as every commercial vehicle over 1.2 tonnes will have to comply or pay the charge. How many tradesmen use a van smaller than that ? How many plumbers, builders, couriers etc are going to go under ?

The scale of the area covered is astounding, just about anything within the M25 but not the motorway itself.

 

[BTB 500]

How will it be enforced? There must be thousands of entry points to that huge zone - will every single one of them get an ANPR camera?

 

[robert.saunders]

I know mobile cameras will be used as well as fixed cameras - although who operates the mobile camera and on what type of vehicle they will be fitted, I don't know

 

[Satch]

How will it be enforced? There must be thousands of entry points to that huge zone - will every single one of them get an ANPR camera?

All around London on the main entry routes ANPR cameras have been installed and continue to sprout. These will be backed up by mobile patrol units equipped with ANPR cameras and Accuscan 4600 cameras, which measure vehicles for the emission of NO, CO, CO2, Hydrocarbons and particulate emissions from diesel vehicles. Fiction? Oh no, these things were running on Tower Bridge last year.

http://www.et.co.uk/cgi-bin/press.cgi?section=1000&category=1000&ID=2039

The system also records the speed and acceleration of the vehicle. All the data is referenced to an image of the registration plate.

Suggestions that Ken wants to extend this to cover cars as well cannot be discounted because of course ANPR cameras pick up ALL vehicles that pass them.

Milan introduced such a scheme on 2 January 2008 and cars have to pay between €2 to €10 per day to enter the zone.

Quite a few other cities in Europe will be launching these soon. Dutch already have nine running for lorries over 3.5 tonnes from July last year

Delft
Rotterdam
Den Haag
Tilburg
Nijmegen
Haarlem
Utrecht
s-Hertogenbosch
Eindhoven

Danes are bringing LEZ's in from mid 2008 in

Copenhagen
Frederiksberg
Aalborg
Århus
Odense

But what about the Germans? Ah, well if you are planning visit Berlin, Cologne, and Hanover nowdays better read this:

http://www.umwelt-plakette.de/int_england.php?SID=m4ln825lpavl4b0minlkhahuk5

https://umwelt-plakette.de/sprachau...step=-2&lang=2&SID=49o23b36rhd5qoel60k25h59f3

and going forward all these cities will have LEZ's

01.03.2008: Ilsfeld, Leonberg, Ludwigsburg, Mannheim, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Stuttgart, Tübingen

01.07.2008 Bochum

01.10.2008 Munich

2008 (Dates not yet set) Augsburg, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Essen, Mühlacker, Pforzheim, Regensburg, Reutlingen,Frankfurt/Main

01.01.2009 Nuremberg (Nürnberg), Herrenberg

01.01.2010 Freiburg (Breisgau)

2010 (Dates not yet set) Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Dresden, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Neu-Ulm, Pleidelsheim, Ulm

Got the picture yet? Yes, Europe is about to become a patchwork quilt of Environmental Zones. What makes you think Ken could resist this temptation along with many other cities in the UK?? And if you already have the infrastructure in place only a short step to Road Pricing

 

[Spinal]

Yes, Europe is about to become a patchwork quilt of Environmental Zones.

I disagree with your choice of words there. I'm the first person to take a step forwards to help the envorinment, and I find it shameful that so many schemes are hiding behind the "its for the environment" excuse.

Paying for polluting isn't helping the environment, its helping someone's budget!

Why aren't there more scheme to improve public transport? Try using a bus in an area you don't know - you'll be lost before you know it! Stops are badly marked (if at all); drivers are HIGHLY unfriendly in the evenings and the service in general is quite pitiful (in my area of London).

• Why haven't I seen bicycles all over town that I can borrow for the day? (like in Paris (and now Nice)?)
• Why hasn't all the money that's been raised from the cc gone to improving public transport? If I'm not mistaked the figures are something on the lines of a staggering 65p of every £1 raised goes in running the scheme; with only £90m (of the raised £250m) being available for public transport!
• More importantly, in this rush to "stop polluting cars" by using the stick, where is the carrot? If my company has an old bashed up van that I use to carry out my day-to-day work, there probably is a reason its an old bashed up van! Last i checked in Italy, the government was subsidising (7500euros too, not a small sum) anyone who replaced a "polluting" car with a newer more efficient one...

On a similarly ticked off note, there is a postcode checker:
http://lezlondon.tfl.gov.uk/lez/zone/default.aspx

This location will be within the Low Emission Zone from 04/02/2008.

Michele

 

[Satch]

Ah, the term "Environment Zone" is derived from the words used in the EU Directive 96/62/EC of 27 September 1996 on ambient air quality assessment and management.

It is up to member states to bring it into force.

Just so happens that some cities have seen a licence to print money and gone the Stealth Taxation route. Not Government Policy though........

You can expect more of the same

 

[hawk20]

I disagree with your choice of words there. I'm the first person to take a step forwards to help the envorinment, and I find it shameful that so many schemes are hiding behind the "its for the environment" excuse.

Paying for polluting isn't helping the environment, its helping someone's budget!

Michele

While you and so many others go on pretending that all the environmentalists want is to fund local authority spending you will never understand those you wish to convince. They may be wrong in their beliefs, but they hold them just as strongly as you hold yours. Pollution from vehicles in cities is huge and is horrid and for some it causes asthma and other breathing problems. Why are you so surprised that some people genuinely want the older more polluting vehicles either off the road, or cleaned up by conversions, or at least penalised for the pollution they cause?

 

[Satch]

While you and so many others go on pretending that all the environmentalists want is to fund local authority spending you will never understand those you wish to convince. They may be wrong in their beliefs, but they hold them just as strongly as you hold yours. Pollution from vehicles in cities is huge and is horrid and for some it causes asthma and other breathing problems. Why are you so surprised that some people genuinely want the older more polluting vehicles either off the road, or cleaned up by conversions, or at least penalised for the pollution they cause?

The problem here is that whilst the motives of the Environmentalists may be clear and entirely sensible, the same cannot be said of mendacious politicians. local or national.

There is a clear trend to raise extra taxes and justify the hikes by dressing them up in Green. Could argue that tax is simply being used as an instrument to apply environmental policy but sadly that is often very far from the truth.

The danger is that true Environmental Policies are also discredited

 

[hawk20]

The problem here is that whilst the motives of the Environmentalists may be clear and entirely sensible, the same cannot be said of mendacious politicians. local or national.

There is a clear trend to raise extra taxes and justify the hikes by dressing them up in Green. Could argue that tax is simply being used as an instrument to apply environmental policy but sadly that is often very far from the truth.

The danger is that true Environmental Policies are also discredited

Once again you are suggesting the motives are just to raise money. Loads of better ways of raising money than the congestion charge which costs a fortune to collect. Just possible that many politicaians have been convinced by the excellent PR of the green guys, that pollution is destroying our planet and harming our health in cities. What excellent PR have we had to rebutt this? None. Just endless bleating that all they want to do is raise taxes -which just doesn't get us anywhere. I know some of the people on the other side and believe me they really believe what they are saying.

 

[Spinal]

While you and so many others go on pretending that all the environmentalists want is to fund local authority spending you will never understand those you wish to convince. They may be wrong in their beliefs, but they hold them just as strongly as you hold yours. Pollution from vehicles in cities is huge and is horrid and for some it causes asthma and other breathing problems. Why are you so surprised that some people genuinely want the older more polluting vehicles either off the road, or cleaned up by conversions, or at least penalised for the pollution they cause?

I think you mis-understood me. I believe quite strongly that cars pollute and would be quite happy to promote a scheme that enables as many people as possible to drive less. (Even though I quite like driving)

Having half my family being asthma sufferers; I have a vague idea of what it can cause.

May I take one specific part of your post though:

Why are you so surprised that some people genuinely want the older more polluting vehicles either off the road, or cleaned up by conversions, or at least penalised for the pollution they cause?

-older more polluting vehicles taken off the road: sounds we're right on track. We charge the oldest and most polluting (i.e. pre-1972, tractors and military trucks) nothing (or next to nothing/less than others)
-older more polluting vehicles penalised for the pollution they cause: again, we seem to be right on track here. I was in Victoria Bus Station the other day and the air felt really clean and healthy; bar the fumes coming from the older buses which you could smell from 2 blocks away...
-older more polluting vehicles cleaned up by conversion: Again, great tax-free incentives here for those that can afford the money to do so; I guess we can conveniently ignore all those who can't afford it

I'm probably more frustrated than you by the ecological situation - not only is there a serious problem; but there are also legions of unscrupulous people ready to cash in on it.

Its like the rumours of Tesco selling bottled water at £4 to water-less homes bottle during the floods... As long as people/companies/politicians can hide behind the "its in the name of the enviroment" excuse; they can do what they want!

I was in Europe over Christmas...
- Nice has just finished installing a brand new electric tramway in the city; the trams have battery packs so they can move even where paying overhead wires would be impractical
- Turin finished its new underground metro line. It uses rubber tyres on concrete tracks (as a post to steel on steel) to minimise noise pollution - no driver is needed.
- Rome is served by ATAC; for public transportation; ATAC is phasing out diesel/petrol buses in favour of methane and electric busses where electric trams are not viable. At the moment 4 routes are served by electric buses and 14 by methane. ATAC also donated a set of electric scooters/mopeds to various institutions, universities and emergency services to replace existing mopeds (and in certain cases small cars)
-There are 11 public electrical-vehicle charging stations in Rome. Adapters/plugs for these are issued FREE to anyone who can bring a registration document for an electric vehicle
-As I already mentioned, on a nationwide-level incentives exist for scrapping vehicles; one such incentive (which I found out about today) targets car sharing:

• If you scrap you vehicle and share one; there is a 800-euro "prize". If instead you scrap 2 family cars and buy just one to replace them (under a certain pollution level) you get 1200-euros.
• If instead you go all the way and scrap your car without buying a new one; you get 3 years of free public transport.
• should you want to convert to LPG or methane, you get 350 and 500 euros respectively towards the cost of the conversion.

In the most polluted cities (i.e. Rome, Milan and Turin) whenever pollution levels go over a certain limit drastic measures are put into force; either the whole town becomes a pedestrian area for a day or two, or only certain vehicles can move around, etc... This usually does NOT affect comercial vehicles! While drastic, this usually works quite well.

And this is just what is in effect now in Italy.

My main gripe with the system here is that "the only 'solution'" (if you can call it that) is artificially inflate the cost of motoring; and there happens to be the "side effect" of making random budgets match.

So, ending my rant - if you want to "save the environment", stop taxing cars and start doing something about it! There are many (many) other methods that would make all but the most petrol-headed people consider a greener-car; taxation is not one of them.

Michele