London’s Low Emissions Zone

Every day, over 50,000 trucks enter the centre of London. From Monday 4th February 2008, London will lay claim to having the largest low-emission traffic zone in the whole of Europe. It is all part of Transport for London’s sustainable development strategy.

Transport for London claim that

‘The objective of the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) is to improve air quality in London. London has the worst air pollution in the United Kingdom and amongst the worst in Europe, adversely affecting the health and quality of life of many Londoners.’

A database of vehicles over 12 tonnes is being creared and over eighty cameras in and around the zone will be able to photo the licence plates of vehicles and che check them against the database. Lorries that have not been registered or which do not meet strict EU standards on CO2 emissions will be charged £200 per day to be in the zone. It is estimated that the scheme will cost up to £50 million to create and around £10 million a year to run.

Transport for London claim that the LEZ will cut pollution 16 percent by 2012, and deliver 250 million pounds in health benefits such as lower spending on treating respiratory illness. But critics of the scheme say that over 10,000 of the lorries that use London each day will not be compliant with the vehcile database. It may well prove costly to chase them up - the majority are foreign owned.

The Low Emissions Zone has been criticised by the Freight Transport Association. In a press release they claimed that:

‘This scheme achieves very little that would not have been achieved anyway as the result of enhanced EU engine standards. This means that Londoners, and lorry operators, are having to pay an enormous price - around a quarter of a billion pounds - £100 million of operator costs and £130 million of London taxpayers’ money - for a trivial improvement in air quality. The biggest pollution from traffic in London comes from cars and the scheme does not apply to them. So we now have a massive and costly infrastructure of signs and cameras in place and a substantial cost to Londoners and lorry operators for a minimal benefit.’

This BBC news audio-visual clip offers a good introduction to the issue