My 2c as a local: a significant issue with any discussion of this is that people don't really have a good handle on the actual statistics of who drives in London.
It cuts across every demographic. Under 25k household income - a good 40-50% of households have a car. Housing estates - tons of cars. Well off - almost everyone.
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-a...
It mostly comes down to whether someone has a need (e.g. has children, fairly mobile in their job, has family outside of town, enjoys going on road trips etc) and actually wants to pay for it rather than anything else.
In addition to that, a bunch of stuff happened basically at the same time. We got ULEZ, we got a ton of low traffic neighbourhoods (e.g. streets where cars are not allowed at certain times of day regardless of emissions), we had COVID meaning that habits and demographics changed, we had Brexit which probably had some minor effect, etc. All of that happened within about 5 years and I don't think you can isolate any of them.
I don't really find most discussions about it interesting as a result of all of the above - it usually just ends up with someone trying to find evidence for their pre-existing position rather than anything that feels actually scientific, unfortunately.
I had a chat with some older people who told me distainfully that the only consequence of ULEZ was that they were not going to drive as much.
I just hope it gains enough inertia so that a theoretical future populist Mayor cant just sweep it aside.
I wish the article stated if the amount of cars traveling in the zone remained the same.
I would think it probably greatly reduced the amount of traffic in that area, which all around just makes for a more pleasant experience being a pedestrian, biker, or scooterer.
Regardless, I think this is awesome and wish it could be tried in the United States. Kids being able to be independent and active is essential to their happiness and development.
> Kids being able to be independent and active is essential to their happiness and development
Add to that growing up with a dog or cat (implies parents are well off enough to take care of said animal when the kid is a kid and spaces being responsible) and living when they can play in wild spaces (not manicured lawns), plant flowers, veg, etc. learn getting stung suks but usually not fatal. A big plus is being around livestock and as the kids mature, having an opportunity to take care of said livestock (4H program)
I haven't really noticed any difference in traffic levels. It dipped a bit during COVID for obvious reasons and now it's back to how it was for the most part.
https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/regions/6 has a good chart - 20 billion vehicle miles to 19 billion. Interestingly from the chart, local traffic stayed about the same whilst main roads seem to have lost a little.
The ULEZ zone is now basically all of the city, it doesn't quite go to the M25 (motorway ring road) but anywhere that a tourist would even remotely think of as being London is well inside it.
One thing to add is that the intention is to change the type of car driven.
The air in London is noticeably cleaner than it used to be. Londoners should be proud of what has been achieved
"Their annual health assessments". Is that something everyone, or maybe every student, in the UK has?
> "Their annual health assessments". Is that something everyone, or maybe every student, in the UK has?
No. It's badly phrased in the article but the annual health assessment is something being done as part of this research, nothing bigger
In Germany there are a few key milestone years that are heavily documented (forget which years) and every kid has to do that with their pediatrician. In the US it's typical to have an annual exam with their pediatrician - this is free and standard for everybody with health insurance (which includes medicaid and state programs). Unlike Germany though I think a parent could be disengaged and that would mean multiple years without a checkup. In Germany I think they'd know and check in on the family if those milestone checkups weren't done.
As many are pointing out that there is no reduction of actual daily traffic in London I recon that if ULEZ has an effect at all, it is soley caused by the gentrification London's government effectivly creates by increasing the cost of living.
You want more active kids in the US? This is easy. Every neighborhood needs to have multiple adjacent lots with no construction on it. Aka, a park of sorts. It doesn't need to have slides, or games, or any of that other stuff. It just needs to be an open space with enough room that groups of kids can go and engage in outdoor activities without the need to be constantly monitored by adults. That's it.
They can play football or baseball or soccer or frisbee or tag. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you give them the room and let them do their own thing. Not only would this help them be more active, but it'd help them socialize a great deal more than they normally do.
My neighborhood has a big city park just across the street from our house, with a lot of free / empty space. One observation: The kids are too busy to go there, as they're kept occupied by homework and organized extracurriculars.
We're seeing (and contributing to, if I'm honest) this parenting mindset that you have to keep kids busy to "keep them out of trouble", thus the schedules get loaded up with organized activities. At least one outcome is that we reached a point where basically none of my kids friends were ever around for just... play. Then our kids are bored, and we'd like them to be doing something with others too, and soon we're signing up them up for activities and the cycle perpetuates.
I’m not sure what you mean by “without the need to be monitored by adults.” A friend of mine from college was prosecuted for letting her kids play alone in the park across the street. Leaving kids alone outside in a US city park is child endangerment, literally.
That’s pretty startling to hear. As a child growing up in a london suburb we would disappear for hours to the local park and environs. Playing cricket, other games, or just roaming around. About the only supervision was if the dog came too.
What really endangers the development of children is the lack of adult-free outdoor play. They need to learn by themselves to assess risks and solve conflicts without any adult supervision.
It's literally how children have played for 99.99% of human existence.
Wow, sounds like a great idea but how is there a way for me to take financial gain from it? And can we protect them from active shooters in the area? Sounds like it should be under constant monitoring from the police.
/s
Perhaps they should make buses prohibitively expensive too, then everyone would be forced to either walk or bike to work/school.
Am I missing something here? Obviously if you apply sin taxes to driving then people who can't afford to pay them are going to be forced to drive less. I bet there would be plenty of "surprising benefits" if we banned all road vehicles and forced people to get around on foot and push bike too...
This article seems to be both making an extremely obvious observation (that the introduction of ULEZ is forcing poor families to get around the city in alternative ways) and missing the fact that such decisions come with both positives and negatives which need to be weighed up.
If we simply want to implement policies to benefit children's health then we'd probably be better off banning junk food. But we don't do that because we understand that there are trade-offs.
ULEZ has been a disaster for many working families and it's highly unpopular for a reason. If you're poor and don't live in the inner city, or if you don't have a nice middle-class office job and need your car/van for work then ULEZ makes you poorer and your life more difficult.
The ULEZ charge only applies to diesel cars built before 2016 or petrol cars built before 2006. ULEZ only applies in London, so all of those non-compliant cars have a ready market outside of London. If you happen to own a car that isn't ULEZ-compliant, then a second-hand car dealer will happily offer you a straight swap for one that is.
You can buy a ULEZ-compliant car for under £1000 - less than the cost of a year's insurance in most London boroughs. If you can't afford to buy a car that is only 18 years old, then I might suggest that you can't afford to own a car at all.
My 2002 MINI was ULEZ-compliant.
I agree with you. The idea that ULEZ means people must give up driving is ridiculous and overblown. It does not affect the vast majority of people at all.
Yeah, we should make all achievements of the 20th century prohibitively expensive, that'll show them.
The more mobile people will just move out somewhere reasonable, the less mobile will suffer. But that's ok, for adversity brings out inner strength.
I don't believe for a second that the reduced emissions are enough for these kids to actually notice. ULEZ is a tax on being poor, nothing more.
I don’t know if kids notice, but I can smell the air pollution every time I drive into outer London from outside London. It’s how I know I’m entering London.
> Four in 10 London children stopped driving and started walking to school a year after the city's clean air zone went into effect.
I had the same interpretation of the headline as you. But, based on the quote, I think the change is that their parents stopped driving them to school.
Vehicle ownership in London has always been expensive. Poor people have never driven in London, poor people use public transport. For all London's faults (of which there are many) the high population density makes public transport useful. Please share evidence for your assertion that the "ULEZ is a tax on being poor". Only half of households in London have a vehicle.
They're probably referring to poor (working class really) people living in outer London who have cars and are now basically frozen out of central London unless they use mass transit or pay for entry. There are also legacy car owners who are poor (rent stabilized, etc...). Anyway, the car has a major negative externality on the city's residents and usage should be taxed to reduce the over-usage of the roads regardless of whether the owner is poor or rich.
> usage should be taxed to reduce the over-usage of the roads regardless of whether the owner is poor or rich.
For the tax to be equally effective on rich as poor, the tax might need to be means tested. A £100 tax disproportionately affects poor people over rich people.
Congestion charge and parking availability would have already frozen out most lower owners driving into Central London (zone 1 and 2). What does rent stabilised mean here? Not a phrase I've ever heard regarding council housing in the UK.
The article never claims that the children notice the emission decrease. The claim is simply that more of them use active transport to school.
Why do you think emissions levels are what the kids detected that changed their behavior? I would posit reducing emissions levels had a knock-on effect that had some other effect, etc. until the last effect in the chain was what made the kids change their behavior.
Despite "emission" being in the name of the ULEZ, I don't think the article is necessarily implying that the mechanism is specifically that kids were more willing to go outside because there was less pollution.
There are various other possible mechanisms: parents decided not to drive their kids based on the fees, there were fewer cars on the road which made it more pleasant for kids to walk to school, etc.
Like, at all? pictures of LA smog in the 80's, or Beijing air pollution now should be enough to convince you that the problem is real, even if you don't believe in the latest round of it.
The poor do not live in the center of London. It’s one of the most expensive places in the world.
London is exceptionally economically polarised because of our housing policy. About 40% of people in inner London live in some form of subsidised social housing. This creates a "hollow middle" in the income distribution - people who are priced out of London because they can't afford market rents, but earn too much to qualify for social housing. You can't really be too poor to live in London, but you can be too average.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/maps/choropleth/housing/tenure...
London, like most major cities, has significant wealth disparity: central London is filled with high-earning transplants living side by side with impoverished locals. Southwark is the London borough containing The Shard, Tate Modern, Borough Market, Tower Bridge yet almost 30% of children in Southwark live in poverty. Poverty touches every part of London. Even the City of London has housing estates.
Living in an apartment rather than a house is a strange definition of poverty.
Its common in British cities for most owners/renters to have terraced or detached housing while council houses (public housing) are in tower blocks or smaller apartment buildings.
A lot of older council apartments in the UK seem to be a bit grim. There's some skepticism against apartment blocks and a lot of newer ones seem to have odd pricing.
I live in a nice apartment in Austria but I'd be a lot more critical looking for one to live in the UK.
> A lot of older council apartments in the UK seem to be a bit grim.
Living on a 1960s council estate (in a non-council apartment) with several low-rise blocks and some high-rise, yeah, it's mildly grim.
some people don’t know poverty and equate not being rich to being poor
> high-earning transplants living side by side with impoverished locals.
Hilarious take, honestly. Can you point me to some evidence, maps, tables, or discussions about the impoverished London-born living cheek-by-jowl with fancy Nigerians? This is the first I am hearing about the disadvantaged natives of London.
I think you're thinking of immigrants as the people coming to the UK from poor countries. Most of those people don't go to London, they move to regional towns and cities.
The people who move into central London from overseas are rich emigrants (Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes, etc).
There is significant social housing in London, where the local council provides housing for people of limited means. This is a historical leftover from more enlightened times (and one that Thatcher tried to eliminate). But the amount of churn in this housing, as you can imagine, is very low - once you have a council house, you never leave it because all the other options are waaaay out of your price range. So there are whole families who have been living in poverty for generations in the centre of London.
The physical presence of Social Housing Estates is the evidence - the occupants are those that aren't otherwise able to afford housing or pay rent. As the commentator says, even the City has Housing Estates.
I'm thinking about the people I know who got booted to the kerb due to the London Olympics redevelopment.
I'm also thinking about Grenfell.
The first time I read the comment I thought it was making an aggregate claim about newcomers being richer than natives, which struck me as obviously, spectacularly incorrect. Why else would a speaker say "high-earning transplants" specifically? If I had to point out an example of unequal wealth in London I am sure my example would be their monarch, not a vague implication of Johnny-come-lately bankers or lawyers.
I am certain that in the aggregate the relationship between wealth or income and length of tenure in London is positive.
And is car dependency not a tax on the poor as well? If the government only builds car-based infrastructure that requires a car then that is a tax on everyone is it not?