Next Tuesday the Ultra Low Congestion Zone extends from the North and South Circular Roads, where it's been since October 2021, to cover almost the whole of the capital. Not all of it, because roads and administrative boundaries don't perfectly align. But enough to bring 99% of Londoners within the boundary, where those who drive non-compliant vehicles are vastly outnumbered by those who breathe polluted air.
If ULEZ expansion peeves you and you feel the need to vent, or if you think it's brilliant and can't see what the problem is, here are two comments boxes for your views. If alternatively you'd like to engage with the content in today's post, please keep reading.
As we saw yesterday, some outer London drivers have got lucky and their neighbourhood won't be covered. But there are also those who would have escaped had TfL not decided to be really really picky, so I've also been off to visit some of them.
If you're driving north out of Barnet towards Potters Bar, this is the last cul-de-sac before Hertfordshire begins. It really is on the edge, the bus stop at the top of the road being in the neighbouring county. That road is Barnet Road and it's ULEZ-exempt, allowing vehicles to drive down to the Highstone at Monken Hadley and turn back. There is zero practical need to add Greenacre Close to the ULEZ, it's a total dead end and only eleven families live down it. But they've added it anyway by sticking up a big sign, and what's more they've added a camera on a thin black pole to act as sentinel in case anyone with a non-compliant car drives in or out. It almost looks vindictive.
You could argue that if a road lies within the ULEZ it should be digitally policed. You could argue it would be unfair to exclude this street when others face the full weight of a daily charge. You could argue they're actually protecting residents from breathing excess air pollution. But when there's a huge field over the back fence where the Green Belt starts and a vast expanse of parkland across the road, the exhaust fumes of a few vehicles are entirely irrelevant. This camera is present solely to enforce a rule, not to protect health. And how many £12.50s would they have to detect to pay for the camera in the first place, assuming anyone who lives here ever needs to pay it. These are million-pound houses, not homeowners struggling to buy a new diesel.
This is the last turn-off inside London on the road to Epping Forest. Tilney Drive is even more on the edge of the capital than Greenacre Close was - the streetsign's in Redbridge but I was standing in Essex when I took the photo. It's another minor cul-de-sac, this time with just eight houses and a small block of flats. When residents drive out of their home street they cross an invisible boundary and enter Epping New Road, none of which is included in the ULEZ. But TfL have still chosen to make this 60m street part of the charging zone, a brief disconnected segment... at least when travelling by road.
The underlying reason for this is that the new ULEZ is essentially the old LEZ. The Low Emission Zone was introduced by Ken Livingstone, that's how old it is, and its charges only applied to highly polluting HGVs, lorries, vans, buses, coaches and specialist heavy vehicles. But it still needed a boundary so they devised a convoluted one that meant HGVs would never be forced to reverse. It made sense then to include Tilney Drive in the LEZ because you wouldn't want a heavy lorry or double decker bus down here. It makes less sense for cars and the ULEZ, but alas peripheral legacy insists. Also I should mention that most of the 'LEZ' signs around the edge of London have yet to be upgraded to say 'ULEZ' as well, because that's a very long job and they've barely started to tackle it.
Various main roads heading into London have been excluded from the extended ULEZ to give drivers a chance to turn round and go back. One such example is Brockley Hill, the shady mile-long lane which connects Elstree to Stanmore, which'll remain free for everyone to drive down. But only as far as Canons Corner, the first roundabout, where a big sign now warns traffic that every exit is in the charging zone other than the one they've just arrived by. That's fair enough, especially given that the top of Brockley Hill has no ULEZ signage whatsoever because it's (just) over the border in Hertfordshire. Live on Brockley Hill, as a handful do, and you have a free pass to drive out of London. But live in a cul-de-sac just off it and nah, they've got you.
This is Julius Caesar Way at the sole entrance to Brockley Park, a private estate on the edge of Stanmore. But that hasn't stopped TfL from erecting a camera on the public approach to the private entrance, and that's 90 "detached executive homes" financially captured. Across the street, in Barnet rather than Harrow, are two more ULEZ-ed cul-de-sacs. Pipers Green Lane is so posh that everyone subscribes to a private security firm and advertises the fact, so they're not going to have trouble coughing up because of a camera at the end of their street. But two-pronged Brockley Avenue is rather more ordinary - somewhere that white van owners live rather than work - and it too has a beady camera keeping a careful eye on comings and goings. Gotcha!
This is a true anomaly, a single London cul-de-sac placed in IG7 because its entrance faces the wrong way. Everything about Amanda Close - architecture, lampposts, bins - suggests it's part of the small Redbridge estate which leads down to Hainault station. But you can't drive out that way, only walk, so the sole exit for 50-or-so cars is directly into Essex instead. You can see the quality of the road surface deteriorate at soon as you cross the boundary at this mini-roundabout, because Epping Forest Council haven't been keeping up with repairs. And you can also see an owl-like camera on a pole because TfL are intent on ensuring even this minor residential blip pays its dues.
The only exit from Amanda Close is onto the loop road of the Limes Farm Estate, which is Chigwell's largest council estate. Birds of a Feather would have been a very different sitcom if they'd set it here amongst these concrete flats rather than up the posh end. I promise to come back and blog about Limes Farm properly one day, given it's very much not what people think Essex looks like. In the meantime just know that Amanda Close might have escaped ULEZ, it being over three-quarters of a mile before their residents can drive into any other part of London, but TfL got them anyway.
For my final example I'm off to almost-as-far-south-as-London-goes, just up the road from Whyteleafe station. Officially this is Kenley, where a handful of streets have been squeezed onto the slope down from the airfield to the railway, and hemmed in by both. Spacious gabled semis line a trio of leafy avenues layered down the hillside, with Mosslea Road near the bottom, Beverley Road in the middle and Hilltop Road at the top. These three roads all link back to each other with minimal connections to the outside world, but only Hilltop Road will be in the ULEZ because the boundary is cruel, or indeed nonsensical.
I cannot work out why this peculiar boundary exists, other than that whoever drew it was thinking about regions rather than roads. Or perhaps they were looking at the area on a Google map where it appears that two additional connecting roads cross the railway and join up with the A22, whereas in real life these are both undriveable footbridges. The only rational explanation I can think of is that someone wanted to ensure that removal lorries visiting houses on Hornchurch Hill, the last road in Surrey, had a big loop inside London allowing them to turn round. The extended ULEZ should start at the southern end of Valley Road rather than screwing residents of Hilltop Road (and half of Hillcrest Road, and Marlings Close)... but it's too late now.
All five of my examples have been of streets inside London, so the Mayor is perfectly entitled to apply ULEZ rules as he thinks fit. But on the very edges of the capital, where bespoke cameras have been installed to catch out a handful of isolated addresses, it's easy to see why some have assumed this is a cash-raising exercise rather than a genuine attempt to clean up the air.
