The Greens at City Hall have accused London mayor Sadiq Khan of allowing the Conservatives to dictate his transport policies by “cowardly” ruling out a pay-per-mile charging road system for drivers.
Khan has said in recent years that he wanted to introduce such a system, saying two years ago that drivers would “pay per mile depending on what time of day they drive, what their vehicle is, what the alternatives are to driving their car and so forth”.
But last year he said he had scrapped those plans, claiming they were no longer necessary following the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone to cover most of Greater London.
His Conservative opponent in this month’s mayoral election, Susan Hall, said throughout her campaign that he was lying and would bring in a per-per-mile system if re-elected. Khan included a line in his manifesto explicitly ruling it out.
In a Q&A session with journalists this week, the London Assembly’s Green group said that by cancelling the plans, the Labour mayor was “tying one hand behind his back” at the same time as trying to meet ambitious climate and traffic reduction targets.
“That is removing one of the most powerful tools he has to reduce transport carbon, and he’s just ruling it out completely,” said Caroline Russell, the Green group leader. “He’s allowed the divisive, Daily Mail, war-on-the-motorist piece to shape his policy, and to limit him in terms of what he can do.”
Khan told the Evening Standard in 2022 that “if we’re serious about net zero carbon, then it’s inevitable we’re going to have to move towards smart road user charging”.
Russell said that Khan should already have introduced a form of pay-per-mile charging, saying that “small, tiny fees per mile” – based on several factors like the size of vehicle being driven – would have been “much fairer” than the “simple, big, chunky fee” of the ULEZ.
“He’s actually just tying one hand behind his back and making it much harder to deliver what he needs to deliver for London to be playing its part in meeting climate targets,” she added.
Zack Polanski, the Greens’ national deputy leader, said the local elections across England had shown that politicians who met their net zero ambitions were rewarded at the ballot box.
“So it just seems like a cowardly decision,” he said. “Why let Susan Hall and the Conservatives dictate your policy, when he would have won anyway?”
The Greens said they would continue pressuring the mayor to clamp down on private car use to drive emissions down.
“This four years has got to be used really strategically, because actually, if we’re going to reduce the transport miles driven [on London’s streets per year], we’ve got to have some real changes,” Russell said.
“The only way he can do it is with big, transformatory stuff. So business as usual, and the idea of it being just normal to use a car for short journeys in a city – I can’t see how he can meet his climate targets without challenging that assumption.”
She added: “We need to be thinking about shared mobility, about many more public transport options, and making it safer and more convenient for people to get around in wheelchairs, mobility scooters, on bicycles, on foot – actually making it easy for people to enjoy their life in our city, and enjoy getting around our city, without necessarily owning a car.”
Transport for London has been studying road user charging since long before Khan took office in 2016. A transport strategy introduced by Boris Johnson in 2010 said that “in the longer term, additional levers such as road user charging may be considered, if needed, to help achieve the mayor’s desired outcomes for London.”
The Conservative mayor’s strategy also included the possibility of charging for “specific infrastructure improvements, such as river crossings”, of which one, the Silvertown Tunnel, was taken forward by Khan.
A spokeswoman for Khan said: “His track record speaks for itself, with 48,000 fewer vehicles seen driving on an average since the London-wide ULEZ was implemented, and a reduction of 800,000 tonnes of CO2 over the past four years”.
She added that Khan was “the greenest mayor ever”, pointing to his manifesto pledges of fully electrifying the capital’s bus fleet by 2030; putting air pollution filters, heat pumps and solar panels in schools; boosting bike parking spaces and electric vehicle charging points; planting more trees, among other promises, and his introduction of Superloop bus services.
“The mayor only has powers to address less than half of London’s emissions,” she said. “This is why Sadiq has urgently called for more funding and powers for City Hall to help bolster our green plans as we build a greener, more prosperous London for everyone.”
Noah Vickers is the Local Democracy Reporter for City Hall, based at the Evening Standard. Editing and additional reporting by Darryl Chamberlain.
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