Richmond Council is setting up a £135,000 project to help residents cope with the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). The new "Good Move" scheme comes as drivers of non-compliant vehicles face a £12.50 daily charge to drive in the borough once the zone is expanded.

Residents will be offered free access to car alternatives including bikes, e-bikes, cargo bikes and car club options. Private car club operators have cars parked across the borough which can be booked by club members.

The news comes as the council has asked the Mayor of London and Transport for London (TfL) for more bus services to help mitigate the ULEZ expansion in the borough. However "neither the Mayor nor TfL has given any specific commitment to increasing bus services," a councillor said. 

Lib Dem councillor Alexander Ehmann revealed the Good Move plans at the council's budget meeting on Tuesday (March 7). Plans for the budget, which was approved at the meeting, are detailed in a council report and include £135,000 "to mitigate against the impact of the ULEZ expansion on residents through a number of alternative travel initiatives".

The Greens put forward amendments to the budget at the meeting, including removing 30 minutes' free parking offered on the Richmond Card, subsidising bike hangar rental and adding more EV charge points.

But Councillor Ehmann, chair of the transport and air quality committee, called the proposals "uncosted" and said the administration had "maintained a continually-focussed eye on active travel infrastructure".

He said: "We're facing a year in which we discussed only at the last council meeting the imminent introduction of ULEZ, and we spoke as a council about the speed at which that was being done as being prohibitively fast and the level of support being unnecessarily anaemic. 

"In that context, it would seem unreasonable for us to talk that talk and then suddenly ratchet up, as you have suggested Green counterparts, these charges that are imposed on people with car ownership."

advertisement

Discussing ULEZ, Councillor Ehmann said the £135,000 will "enable us to set out a Good Move programme which means that we can offer people financial support for different mobility options". 

The council passed a motion in January voicing support for ULEZ expansion but calling for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to delay it by up to a year, widen the scope of the scrappage scheme and improve public transport in Richmond.

Lib Dem councillor James Chard asked for an update on how the Mayor and Labour members of the Greater London Authority (GLA) had responded to the motion at Tuesday's meeting.

Councillor Ehmann said: "Regrettably, neither the Mayor nor TfL have given any specific commitment to increasing bus services in the borough – only vague statements about increasing some bus services and routes in outer London in the generality.

"We will be putting to TfL suggestions for new and strengthened routes, and the scope of the scrappage scheme has not been extended. We are, however, introducing a Richmond Good Move scheme… a £135,000 package of support to offer free access to bike, cargo bike, e-bike, micro-mobility and car club alternatives to replace like-for-like car replacement during ULEZ transition." The scheme is in the early stages so no more details are available yet.

ULEZ currently covers areas in Barnes, Mortlake, East Sheen, North Richmond and Kew but will expand to the whole of the borough from August 29. The scheme targets the most polluting vehicles and aims to tackle air pollution, the climate emergency and congestion.

The Mayor's scrappage scheme is providing £110million to support disabled and low-income Londoners, charities and sole traders to replace the most polluting vehicles. TfL has opened consultations on expanding bus routes serving Brent, Barnet, Wandsworth and Havering ahead of the expansion, and said the proposals will be "followed by more enhancements across London".

In a statement in February, the Mayor said: "The horrific ongoing impact of air pollution on London's children weighed heavily on my thinking when I took the decision to expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone London-wide later this year. Of course, during difficult economic times this was a decision I wrestled with. But we simply cannot ignore the human cost of ditching or delaying this expansion."

advertisement