STOP LBHF ROAD

PRICING BY STEALTH

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Exposing links between LBHF’s under-publicised plans

and Mayor Khan’s anti-driver policies

 

 

QUICK SUMMARY: Mayor Khan and LB Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF) have both been looking at a means of making more money from drivers. Both have been trying it on over ‘health’ and ‘climate’ as an excuse.

 

Neither have been totally honest with the public. LBHF is trying to sneak through drastic rises in parking charges in breach of election promises and assurances on the ‘cost of living’. There is now the threat of charging drivers for driving on some or all local roads, and the consequences could be drastic for family finances and our freedom.

 

LBHF’s Air Quality Action Plan has been written for it by someone in Khan’s GLA empire. The holy-holy claims of deaths being ‘linked to’ air quality let alone vehicle use are suspect. This article seeks to generate public debate about what is being done at our expense behind the scenes and to hold decision-makers to account

  

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ROAD PRICING PLANS HIDDEN IN LBHF’s 2023 CONSULTATION…

 

·        At the end of 2023, LBHF’s draft Air Quality Action Plan (AQAP) slipped out. It was out for public consultation until 9 Feb 2024, but only highlighted in the weekly mailing to residents on 12 Jan 2024.

 

·        And the (under-publicised) publicity material hid some sinister intentions. i.e.

 

We will conduct a feasibility study on further localised road user charging on strategic links or local areas alongside existing adopted regional and local policy.

 

Conduct a feasibility assessment on road user charging by 2030.

 

We will take all necessary actions and fully support proposals to expedite geofencing… in areas of poor air quality and high congestion.

 

·        A lot of big words. Reminds us of Ken Livingstone’s bland manifesto commitment just to ‘explore’ a Congestion Charge?

 

 

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

 

·        It’s a no-brainer that you don’t conduct a study if you have zero intention of going through with the plans.

 

·        As regards ‘feasibility’, the technology for road pricing has been in place for years. Former Transport for London (TfL) boss Peter Hendy – now a Transport minister – confirmed it was ready in 2006. Mayor Khan has looked at Singapore’s system as a model and London is full of surveillance cameras.

 

·        As regards geofencing that they are keen to rush in….

 

This is basically tracking vehicles moving in or out of a defined area, or being present in it. Communications technologies like GPS or 5G phone signals might be used. There is the potential for arbitrary local equivalents of the congestion charge on a fixed boundary, or variable boundaries depending on conditions.

 

Mayor Khan has been very keen to get 5G communications devices onto street furniture such as bus shelters and lamp posts. Smart phone technology can already be linked to journey tracking and payments.

 

 

 askew3355-sm GIF

 

 

 

 

 

 

LBHF – STEPPING STONES TOWARDS LOCAL ROAD PRICING

 

·        500 air composition sensors are already in place in LBHF. Their supplier, Vortex, is part of a group whose interests coincidentally include a road pricing company and bailiffs.

 

Vortex’s John Vinson wrote an article on how understanding local air conditions could lead to new ways of ‘managing’ traffic, The intrusive local pinpointing sounds like ULEZ on steroids. He noted (prophetically?):

...

“…combining with other data sources such as traffic information, it could become possible to develop user-specific charges, e.g. you drive a Ford Mondeo 2.0l diesel which has a known particulate output (based on DVLA information) and you want to drive into a city-centre location at a specific time, on a specific day, it will cost that user £4.75, whereas the same journey for a newer vehicle with lower particulate emissions might cost £1.10 for the same journey, just one example of how air quality data could be used in the future.”

 

·        As London’s air is getting cleaner and cleaner, you have to ask why politicians come out with sudden hysteria claiming a ‘public health emergency’? It’s funny that if London’s air is so filthy/toxic (as Mayor Khan claims), why is he always urging people to walk and cycle in it?

 

 

 

LBHF – SUPPORTING MAYOR KHAN’S TRANSPORT POLICIES…

 

·        Mayor Khan got elected on a slogan ‘A Mayor for All Londoners’. But his key policy document, the Mayor’s Transport Strategy (MTS) is blatantly anti-motorist. Transport for London (TfL) is bound by the Strategy to (high handedly) ensure that by 2041, 80% of journeys made in Greater London are either by walking, cycling or public transport. Motor vehicle journeys are to be pushed off the road.….

 

·        LBHF updates a Local Implementation Plan (LIP), a transport plan for supporting the MTS.

 

·        The MTS feels that motorists pay too little for road use in London and encourages money-raising measures such as road user charging or a workplace parking levy (‘a tax on going to work’).

 

It notes that the Mayor will work with London boroughs on setting up their own local road pricing schemes (p96 or p49/163). LB Hackney and the City of London are already potentially involved.

 

·        LBHF’s draft AQAP document was notably written for them by Poppy Lyle, a senior manager in the Mayor’s GLA environment division.

 

 

 

There have been denials that LBHF has been going for unpopular ‘Low Traffic

 Neighbourhoods’ that have been pushed (at our expense) by Khan’s MTS.

The claims that they are just “Clean Air Neighbourhoods” wears thin

when the truth is revealed by a consultation webpage. Reference

 

WHAT IS TRANSPORT FOR LONDON UP TO BEHIND THE SCENES?

 

·        In 2021, before ULEZ was expanded on hyped “air quality” grounds, Mayor Khan’s TfL explicitly looked for ‘New Revenue Sources”. They recommended lucrative ‘pay per kilometre’ road pricing (p56) – but in the short term went for expanding ULEZ as an easy option – despite overwhelming public opposition.

 

·        Clues were given in the 2022 consultation, during which ULEZ got almost all the coverage and the Mayor’s road pricing ambitions were conveniently much under-publicised. We can see why – the following self-satisfied hype from TfL is just insulting to our intelligence!

 

…further action will be needed in the long-term to achieve the necessary levels of traffic and emissions reductions to continue to improve Londoners’ health and to meet net zero carbon targets to tackle the climate emergency. This may require the introduction of London-wide road user charging by 2030 at the latest, as set out by an Element Energy analysis of a 2030 net zero target for London. The analysis notes that all scenarios would benefit from London-wide road user charging being introduced as early as possible”.

 

·        However, a ULEZ consultation document known as the Jacobs Report also gives the game away that the proposed scheme will “have a negligible beneficial impact on carbon emissions in Greater London.”

 

·        The ‘necessary reductions’ that Mayor Khan wants are 27% of our motor vehicle journeys in London and are based on a strange report from the Element Energy consultancy [2022]. For some reason, the Mayor insists on aiming for the ‘Net Zero’ fantasy world target by 2030, 20 years ahead of national government.

 

LBHF has also committed to the same flat earth target locally, which it admits it cannot achieve without massive external subsidies. (For an expose of Net Zero hype click here.)

 

·        Related to LBHF’s AQAP is the bizarre Net Zero 2030 Parking Strategy. This is a money-making ruse that penalises parked vehicles with their engines off, so have negligible emissions!  LBHF are trying to massively increase charges in breach of promises on cheaper parking and help with the cost of living!!!

 

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HYPOCRISY ON HEALTH USED AS A COVER FOR DICTATORIAL POLICIES

 

·        In the shorter term, Mayor Khan wants to justify increased driving taxes on ‘climate change’ and ‘air quality’ grounds.

·        Mayor Khan has levied a charge of £20 on council tax bills for TfL, which has been pushing for unpopular schemes like LTNs (Low Traffic Neighbourhoods) that force traffic onto main roads. They make drivers travel further, burning more fuel and increasing emissions.

·        The suggestion that around 4,000 Londoners die a year as a result of air pollution is a bit of a try-on. Visit here for a rebuttal on the deaths, which the GLA has admitted are a ‘statistical construct… not real people’.

·        Yet LBHF is supporting this ruse by suggesting that 82 deaths a year locally ‘are linked' to air quality’. This figure is from the very glossy AQAP approved by the LBHF Cabinet in Dec 2024. It is lifted sweepingly from a computer model. No information is given such as whether they are heavy smokers or whether there were other serious conditions, etc. There are also massive uncertainties in attributing deaths to particulate levels.

Yet the AQAP targets an extremely low level of emissions, far more stringent than national legal targets. This seems rather like the ‘zero Covid’ approach in China, which imposed drastic restrictions, seeking perfection (for nominal gain) but at potentially heavy cost. 

 

One of the references given warns ‘not to over-interpret’ emissions levels. Caution is needed when considering apparent trends for a number of reasons. Year on year weather changes typically have more effect on the level of particulates (PM2.5) than variations in emissions. In a nutshell, this is a warning that drivers could be severely penalised for weather factors that are beyond anyone’s control.

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The Fair Deal for the Motorist campaign was launched in 2009 as

a private initiative. It has exposed plans from the EU and levels of

UK government that together add up to a War on The Motorist.

It is solidly non-party i.e. lets you support your own candidates.

 

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Summary version of this article

In-depth air quality article

LBHF articles index

Campaign articles index

 

 

 

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