Over 53,000 vehicles have been removed from London’s roads under the ULEZ scrappage scheme. Air quality had also improved at 99 percent of air quality monitoring testing sites across London since 2019, according to the Mayor of London.
A total of 35,094 cars and 17,964 vans were removed from London’s roads or upgraded to a ULEZ-compliant vehicle, a new report by Transport for London found. NOx emissions from road transport are estimated to be 36 per cent lower across London in 2024, a saving of around 3,400 tonnes.
Carbon emissions equivalent to nearly three million one-way passenger trips between Heathrow and New York have also been saved by the scheme, says TfL. London’s air quality was also found to be improving at a rate faster than the rest of England.
London’s most deprived areas have also been found to benefit the most from ULEZ, with some of communities living near London’s busiest road seeing an estimated 80 percent reduction in people exposed to illegal levels of pollution.
Outer Londoners, who received 88 percent of the distributed funding, benefited the most from the scheme. Croydon and Hillingdon boroughs also saw the highest number of successful applicants for the scheme.
The ULEZ scrappage scheme is a program which provides financial assistance to Londoners who wish to replace their more polluting cars with more environmentally friendly options. The London-wide scheme was launched in January 2023 and is funded entirely by the Mayor of London.
Critics of the scheme have said that the scrappage scheme is ineffective as the cost of second-hand ULEZ compliant cars has risen.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I am proud that the scrappage scheme – the biggest in the UK – has supported so many Londoners to switch to cleaner, greener forms of transport. This has made a huge difference to our air quality, and also encouraged many Londoners to take up more sustainable ways of travelling, which will make a lasting difference to our capital.
“ULEZ compliance is now more than 97 per cent, bringing cleaner air to millions of Londoners. London’s air quality is now improving at a faster rate than the rest of England and we’ve also made a difference overseas, with hundreds of vehicles supporting the medical and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
“I will continue to take bold, world-leading action to improve London’s air quality and the health of Londoners, as we build a better, fairer, greener capital for all.”
The ULEZ zone was introduced in 2019 to try and help reduce the amount of toxic air in London. It was expanded to cover the Inner London area inside the North Circular and South Circular road in October 2021.
In 2023, it was once again expanded to cover all 32 London boroughs, bringing an additional five million people into the zone. The move caused serious backlash from some, with “vigilantes” even purposefully destroying ULEZ cameras in some cases.
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