Every Breath You Take: Better ways to clean up London's air

A new report released today, Every Breath You Take: Better ways to clean up London's air, expands on last month’s report; why the London-wide expansion of the ULEZ zone is the wrong decision and should be abandoned. Every Breath You Take explores potential alternatives to make tangible headway in improving London’s air quality.

The Mayor originally claimed that expanding the ULEZ to make it London-wide would reduce NO2 emissions by 10% but the detailed impact assessment later found that NO2 levels across London would fall by just 1%.

As the positive environmental impact of expanding the ULEZ London-wide would be negligible at best, this report considers better ways to improve air quality, that provide Londoners with greater value for money.

Instead, the Mayor could;

• Invest some of the money saved by abandoning plans for a London-wide ULEZ into making the bus fleet zero-emission faster.

• Expand zero emission bus zones, prioritising areas of poor air quality and deprivation until the bus fleet becomes completely zero emission.

• As the bus fleet increases its number of zero emission buses, the Mayor should create more low emission bus routes continuing to prioritise areas that suffer from poor air quality.

• Bring back the previous Boiler Cashback Scheme which provides Londoners with the opportunity of funding for cleaner and more economical heating systems.

• The Mayor should redouble his efforts to live up to his promise to plant 2 million trees in Lond

• Install more rapid electric vehicle charging points and create additional charging hubs.

• Accelerate the delivery of a zero emission GLA vehicle fleet.

• Work with TfL and London boroughs to assess what blocks are preventing the further expansion of car clubs and to work together to remove them.

• Invest some of the money saved by abandoning plans for a London-wide ULEZ to finance a bigger and better scrappage scheme, including the option of travel credits that could be spent on either car clubs or public transport.

Shaun Bailey, London-wide AM says -

“Londoners are right to expect serious action to clean up the city’s air, but the Mayor’s £200m London-wide ULEZ expansion fails to deliver. The Mayor’s own study found the impact would be negligible at most. Worse still, the policy punishes those who cannot afford to upgrade their vehicles in the middle of a cost of living crisis.”

“If the Mayor wants to improve London’s air quality, he needs to abandon his low-impact high-cost ULEZ expansion and consider alternatives. In our report, we have set out a series of alternative proposals that would better improve air quality, including turbocharging progress on London’s zero emission bus fleet, and investing in a bigger and better vehicle scrappage scheme.”

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