Cleaner air, worse traffic, or both at once, depending entirely on which report you happen to be reading this month
I have started three different versions of this entry, and each one accidentally turned into a rant about one side or the other, which is precisely the problem with writing about ULEZ in this city: it seems almost impossible to describe the scheme in neutral terms without someone deciding you have picked a side.
What The Mayor’s Office Says
City Hall points to independent data showing an estimated 40 per cent reduction in deaths linked to air pollution between 2019 and 2024, alongside falls of 28 per cent in PM2.5 and 41 per cent in NO2 levels citywide, figures the Mayor has repeatedly described as clear evidence the scheme, alongside other clean air measures, is working. That is a genuinely significant public health claim, and one worth taking seriously rather than dismissing simply because it comes from a mayor with an obvious political interest in the scheme’s success.
What The Critics Say Right Back
Critics, including several outer London residents and small business owners, point to separate data suggesting central London congestion levels have actually risen over the same period, alongside continued frustration over penalty charge notices, TfL collected close to £5.6 million in ULEZ fines in a single recent year according to figures reported by GB News, and the ongoing cost of replacing a van or car that narrowly misses the compliance threshold.
Where The Two Claims Actually Overlap
Here is the genuinely tricky bit: both claims can be true simultaneously. A scheme can measurably reduce certain pollutants while congestion, driven by entirely separate factors including population growth, delivery van volume, and roadworks, continues rising regardless. The Mayor himself has acknowledged London remains, in his own words, not currently on track to meet its 2030 emissions targets, a admission that complicates the more triumphant version of the ULEZ story without actually disproving its central public health claim either.
The Bit That Gets Lost
What tends to get lost in the yearly recycling of this argument is that nearly half of Londoners do not own a car at all, meaning the health benefits of reduced pollution and the direct financial cost of the charge fall on genuinely different, only partially overlapping groups of residents, a distributional detail that makes the debate considerably harder to resolve with a single, satisfying verdict either way.
A Small North London Observation
Around here, opinion splits fairly predictably along who drives regularly for work and who does not, tradespeople and small business owners tend toward frustration, while residents without a vehicle tend toward cautious support, a divide that maps rather neatly onto genuine, different material interests rather than any tidy political tribe.
What I Actually Think, For What It’s Worth
I do not think this newsletter needs to resolve a debate City Hall, TfL, five Conservative councils, and a High Court challenge have already spent several years failing to fully settle. What I will say is that both the health data and the congestion data deserve to be read carefully rather than cherry picked, and that anyone offering you a fully triumphant or fully damning one line verdict on ULEZ is, almost certainly, leaving something out.
Where To Read More
For the fuller data picture, MyLondon has tracked both the health claims and the congestion figures in more detail than I have room for here. As ever, more of my own London musings live at my author page on The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
