Older vehicles face £10 'toxicity' charge in central London

[AlabamaShrimp]

I could say a lot more but that would just turn into a rant .

Anyhoos I'm still celebrating the swearing in of Scott Pruitt over here, arses will be a twitching over the weekend.

The malt is going down well, too well in fact cos I've got to save some for when they show the door to that NASA fraudster Gavin Schmidt and that other asshole Michael Mann.

I don't know why I'm asking but I am cause you sound smug but, what the fuck you on about?

 

Edit: for the benefit of our most erstwhile colleague I will rephrase my previous question in a more wordy way.

 

Dear chap, congratulations on your consumption of alcohol this appears to have made you most jubilant at the appointment of a gentleman in a position within the administration of the united states of America.

I must admit that I have no understanding of why this is a such a delight or what the other gentleman you also reference have to do with the matter.

Pray sir may you please enlighten myself more in depth so I may be correctly informed.

 

(that better for you?)

[chaseracer]

We could try to explain, but it might involve words longer than four letters and with more than one syllable.

[Guest Breadvan72]

I don't know why I'm asking but I am cause you sound smug but, what the fuck you on about?

 

 

He may perhaps be referring to the notion that a scientific consensus supported by major universities, research institutes, and other scientific bodies worldwide is all a fraudulent conspiracy, that has been unmasked by a plucky band of selfless billionaires and public spirited multinational oil companies.  

[Pillock]

How the fuck does £10 a day stop people getting lung diseases? It does'nt but once again the cash cow that is the British working man is being milked again.

 

It doesn't really, unless they're going to donate all the £10s to charities researching lung conditions, or putting in more electric charging points and subsidising zero emission vehicles even more. But then I don't know if £10 per diesel in the Congestion Zone is worth £100 a day, £10,000 a day or £1,000,000 a day.

 

What it does is make people think, since if you're going to and from one place in the city from out of the city, £10 is around the cost of a return tube ticket. And if you were going to park somewhere in the city, then it's probably cheaper to park at an outlying station anyway (Stanmore is £5 for 24 hours)

[DodgeRover]

What it does is royal fuck over all the hard working people who have already bought another commercial vehicle so they can continue driving within the M25 LEZ zone but are now going to get shafted again into having to buy another or pay another £10 a day. A lot of people have no choice but to drive a van into London so they can do a days work.

Look how well it ended for the last Brazilian plumber on the tube with a backpack full

[AlabamaShrimp]

He may perhaps be referring to the notion that a scientific consensus supported by major universities, research institutes, and other scientific bodies worldwide is all a fraudulent conspiracy, that has been unmasked by a plucky band of selfless billionaires and public spirited multinational oil companies.

Thank you sir, most concise!

[lisbon_road]

I think the area is so small that they should just ban cars and that's the end of it.  There may be enough evidence that there is a problem, sure, but the conflicting evidence about new diesels being worse or better, I've read that direct injection petrol can make huge amounts of particulates and all sorts of other stuff, and so on doesn't convince me that older cars are the true villans.

 

Beats me why we don't bring back trolleybuses.  So simple, no batteries, used to have 1500 of them in London.  And have lpg taxis like in many countries of the world, which have simple technology and give loads better emissions.  Perhaps gradually move to electric taxis but lpg taxis could start tomorrow so easily. 

[Craig the Princess]

 

Beats me why we don't bring back trolleybuses. So simple, no batteries, used to have 1500 of them in London.

Because NIMBYs don't like the wires spoiling the view. Of concrete urban decay.

[Guest Breadvan72]

A radical plan would be to ban all vehicles except buses, taxis and delivery vans from central London, but this seems unlikely to happen.   The tube is quite good these days, but is feeling the strain from sheer passenger numbers.   At present there are too many buses, but that might not be the case if private cars were banned.  The C Zone area is, as pointed out above, quite small, but the short lived extension west did not work, especially as it took in the areas of high Mum Truck/Chelsea tractor and Maserati ownership, so all that lot got to use the whole zone at the cheapo resident rate.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Sadie Can is on Peston at the moment, talking about his ingenious* idea to charge people whilst maintaining the smog surrounding the capital. He looks like he hasn't slept for a week. Regardless of his ridiculous ideas, I reckon diesels are dead meat.

[PhilA]

Because NIMBYs don't like the wires spoiling the view. Of concrete urban decay.

Easy. Third rail and use the £10 earned to educate people on road safety

 

You shouldn't be on tram tracks anyway

 

Phil

[DodgeRover]

I would give it less than 10 minutes before the more enterprising members of community had twigged free* electricity could be had.....

[Pillock]

That's fine, 750V DC will make their Xboxes play games faster, or something.

[Sheefag]

Residents will get three years exemption to sort their replacement motor out, nowt to do with them having a vote or anything.

Cabbies are exempt, nowt to do with them being rather militant or anything.

Foreign registered vehicles are exempt because it's just too hard.

Anyway, It's not just diesels gents, it's older petrols as well.

Whack your motor into this and enjoy

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/emissions-surcharge/emissions-surcharge-checker

[LostnotFound]

Residents will get three years exemption to sort their replacement motor out, nowt to do with them having a vote or anything.

Cabbies are exempt, nowt to do with them being rather militant or anything.

Foreign registered vehicles are exempt because it's just too hard.

Anyway, It's not just diesels gents, it's older petrols as well.

Whack your motor into this and enjoy

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/emissions-surcharge/emissions-surcharge-checker

 

This combined with as pointed out by everyone else, the fact the area it covers is bound to grow till it hits the m25 eventually is what does my head in. Once you start having to change tubes it can be a lot quicker for journeys outside of zone 1 to drive.

 

I'm relatively tree hugging, but you only have to walk past any taxi rank at a station in London with all the diesels idling away to think that if I turned up on a one off occasion in my dastardly 1.6 pez focus it would make the square root of fuck all difference. 

 

That's just the car related issue. It appears the powers that be have decided not to exempt motorcycles / scootards once the ulez comes in, quite how a five year old diesel sitting in traffic averaging walking pace over a journey puts out less nasties than a bike that has it's engine running for a fraction of a time as well as improving all users emissions by reducing congestion for all I don't know.

[AlabamaShrimp]

Love their answers to what you can do if your car is too old,

 

 

You can of course walk you peasant! Or why not spend more on hiring a car to save £10 but still costing you God knows how much for other charges and parking

[andy18s]

Buy a small bike or scooter.

Ok,most of them are less emission friendly than your local supertanker but its all good fun.

Job done

[Dave_Q]

Love their answers to what you can do if your car is too old,

 

IMG_20170219_232633.jpg

 

You can of course walk you peasant! Or why not spend more on hiring a car to save £10 but still costing you God knows how much for other charges and parking

To be fair a lease on a OMGnew econobox like a panda or something is going to be much less than £10 a day if you absolutely must drive into that London 5 days a week.

[Sheefag]

Buy a small bike or scooter.

Ok,most of them are less emission friendly than your local supertanker but its all good fun.

Job done

No problem getting this little lot on the back of a scooter.

 

 

 

 

[Lacquer Peel]

Did you answer the question about the age of your vans Sheefag? You are outraged about something that probably doesn't really affect you.

[garethj]

You can get all of that onto a scooter, you might just need to make 2 trips.  3 at the most.

[Craig the Princess]

No problem getting this little lot on the back of a scooter.

 

 

 

 

CNN. Sad. Fake news.

[Craig the Princess]

This combined with as pointed out by everyone else, the fact the area it covers is bound to grow till it hits the m25 eventually is what does my head in. Once you start having to change tubes it can be a lot quicker for journeys outside of zone 1 to drive.

 

 

Much the same was said about the c-charge when that came in and it has only had a tiny extension in about 12 years.

 

Something needs to be done about the appalling air quality. Even London's football teams look tired and out of breath.

[Sheefag]

Did you answer the question about the age of your vans Sheefag? You are outraged about something that probably doesn't really affect you.

 

It affects the vehicles in my signature, why on earth would I make this up?

[Lacquer Peel]

Do you use your private cars to shift FAKE NEWS?

[Sheefag]

Out of meds?

[cort1977]

 and that other asshole Michael Mann.

 

What's Michael Mann done?   Miami Vice, Heat, Collateral - all totally awesome.

[anonymous user]

Love their answers to what you can do if your car is too old,

 

IMG_20170219_232633.jpg

 

You can of course walk you peasant! Or why not spend more on hiring a car to save £10 but still costing you God knows how much for other charges and parking

I'm sure that I have missed something (probably the point) but how does joining a car club make your vehicle comply with these emission regulations? Presumably I could join the Bugatti Owners Club and then take any old diesel van in without penalty (not sure what their membership fee is these days, but it could be a saving)

[Rave]

In the early 90s if you went up and strolled around central London for the day you could pick a load of black grot out of your nose when you came home courtesy of all the Routemasters and ancient Fairways. I quite often used to spend 6 hours standing at Marble Arch supervising buses from 2008 to about 2013, and never had that problem. I guess the problem now is the stuff you cant see.

 

I'd also have no real problem with banning private cars from the C-Charge zone, or even the area equivalent to Zone 1 of the train/tube network, but in my experience (most recently, driving buses into town until July last year) there really aren't many private drivers around anyway- there are quite a few private hire vehicles, but the rest is all delivery vans/lorries, buses, and tradesmen. The only thing is that there are places in Central London that people need to get to- the only time I've ever paid the C-Charge in however long it's been going was earlier this year, when I had to drop my father in law off at St Thomas' Hospital so he could have his heart defibrilated. He can't walk all that far, so a train and tube journey in the peak of rush hour would have been pretty hellish for him, and the £12 was far cheaper than paying for a cab, black or otherwise- in fact £22 would still have been cheaper I reckon.

[Lacquer Peel]

Out of meds?

Are you?