Transport for London (TfL) will need to impose a ‘tax’ called the ‘Ultra Low Emission Zone’ (ULEZ) on London motorists for a generation in order to recover the costs of the Crossrail overspend. At least that was the argument made in the last piece In reality the income from the ULEZ is not ring fenced to pay for the Crossrail overspend, it creates a funding ‘blackhole’ that TfL must fill by raising revenue.
Below is a post made by a lady in my local area on community website nextdoor.co.uk. It describes well the downstream consequences of the ULEZ charges:
Most people will be supportive of ULEZ objectives on air quality and health. One of the criticisms made of it as the speed it is being introduced without a well funded scrappage scheme to help people migrate to less polluting vehicles.
A proper scrappage scheme is an opportunity cost of the Crossrail overspend. According to TfL there are 2.56 million licensed cars in London. If we assume that 1 million of these are older diesels, then the £4bn Crossrail overspend would provide an additional £4,000 per vehicle or £12,000 if using the broader overspend costs from the first article. The current TfL scrappage scheme has funding on £110m
Interesting to look back in time to when the car industry was promoting diesels as ‘clean’:
Notes and References
Technical Note 12 - How many cars are there in London and who owns them? (tfl.gov.uk)
Scrappage scheme - Transport for London (tfl.gov.uk)