What was that about Sadiq Khan’s expansion of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) supposedly helping to reduce our dependence on cars and clean up the air? As well as the stick of charges of non-compliant vehicles, Khan has rolled out a very large carrot: £121 million of funds to help motorists ‘transition to greener alternatives’. That includes £49 million worth of scrappage grants for cars, at £2,000 a time, and £72 million worth of scrappage payments for vans and minibuses. According to City Hall in a press release last October, the whole package has resulted in 80,000 fewer motorists driving around London.
So London’s streets are presumably now much less congested than they were before Ulez was brought in? Er, not quite. According to the sat nav maker TomTom, congestion last year was actually worse than it was before Ulez and the pandemic. In 2023, motorists spent an average of 45 per cent of their journey time stuck in jams, up from 37 per cent in 2019. If
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