On London Extra: Quantifying ULEZ

What it's done and what might have been. Plus LTNs assessed, book swap intervention, the Mayor at MIPIM and much more

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One of the best things about the reaction to TfL's one-year assessment of the expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone across the whole of London has been the silence it has produced in certain quarters. Having screamed their heads off about the Mayor's air quality improvement scheme for many months before it even came into effect in August 2023, that normally voluble mass of media entities that hate Sir Sadiq Khan has gone all quiet.

Well, have a heart: having first proclaimed that the policy would see Khan lose last year's election, they now have to deal with TfL saying that, as of September 2024, the number of vehicles driving in outer London that didn't comply with ULEZ standards was almost 100,000 lower than in June 2023, shortly before the scheme came into effect, with concentrations of harmful Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) at suburban roadsides and levels of harmful airborne particles also lower as a result.

Yah boo. And yet, hang on. To what degree can the changes for the better quantified by TfL be attributed to the ULEZ, and to what degree would they have happened anyway, as older, more polluting vehicles were gradually replaced by newer, cleaner ones?