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Comment by dontlaugh | Hacker News Reader

There's another fairly obvious grain of truth in the overall silly protest: ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars.

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I ran into this in the real world the other day. Every year, the university I work at has raised parking pass prices (while slashing parking, but that's another problem). We've gone from $80 to $260 in the last 5 years. I recently bought a 2016 Hyundai Sonata hybrid with 180,000 miles. I found out that the university offers a 15% discount to parking passes for "low emission vehicles", presumably as some sort of incentive to fight climate change or something. They referenced a list of low emission vehicles that qualify, created by a third party called LEED:

https://greenercars.org/news/list-leed-qualified-cars

I made the mistake of scrolling through this list. On the list: 2022 M850i xDrive Coupe 4.4L V8. A vehicle of pure excess, entirely unnecessary, getting 20mpg while transporting like two people. Not on the list: my 1988 Ford Bronco with a 2.9L V6 that can haul cargo, move people and dead animals, drive off-road and gets ~20 mpg.

So in the eyes of the university and LEEDS list people, it would be better for me to ditch my perfectly functional 1988 vehicle and instead purchase a brand new 2022 V8 sports coupe. This is literally just a poor person tax.

It will end in the same way Cash4Clunkers did in the US: Poorly and hardly trying to hide the fact it's a government subsidy for the automotive industry at the expense of poor and middle class.

I mean neither of those cars would be on the road if we were serious about climate change, right?

I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right? Is it possible that someone at your university was tricked?

> I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right?

No, LEED credits are given to buildings for providing incentives for low-emitting vehicles.

https://www.usgbc.org/credits/new-construction/v2009/ssc43

I’m not sure why you started that comment with “no,” as we seem to agree?

Oops, cut off the quote too early, it was in response to "Is it possible that someone at your university was tricked?"

The list is real and it is part of a LEED standard. Technically it's compiled by ACEEE and just referenced by USGBC, but it's a real thing and not trickery.

Ok then, that makes sense.

I don't totally disagree, but it's tough to imagine a scenario where building and driving a new electric vehicle of the same capability as my 1988 Bronco is more climate friendly simply continuing to drive my Bronco a few thousand miles a year.

Exactly. ULEZ allows euro 6 diesels at 4-6L, but disallows euro 4 diesels at 1-2L. The emissions are worse by volume for the newer car.

If ULEZ and CAZ were serious about air quality they’d tax based on per passenger emissions, which would end up taxing the rich people in excessive luxury cars.

There must be more to the Universities use of that list. The list appears to rate all vehicles on fuel economy and emissions. It does not look like a list of "better" vehicles. The Ford Bronco Sport is on the list. The list only goes as far back as 1999, which is why earlier Bronco's aren't on the list. The BMW 850i is shown as having being among the worst in the "Green Score" column.

So, did the Uni specify that their discount applied to vehicles which got better than a certain "Green Score" according to that list? If not, then everybody is eligible for the discount, even Ford Bronco's if they're newer than 1999.

There's no listed requirement, other than that it must be on the list. The landing page for the list even says:

>A list of vehicles that meet the LEED Low Emitting and Fuel Efficient Vehicles requirements from model years 1998 - 2023.

If you have a Ford with the 2.9L V6 still going after all these years that is impressive. Between the oil pump only making 6 psi at maximum RPM and the cylinder head's including a design that was very likely to crack they didn't last long out on the road.

Also keep in mind, the emissions of pollutants is much higher from this older engine while the emission of CO2 is probably lower.

> ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars.

I don't think there's any reason to believe they mostly do this. Mostly what they do is encourage people to use public transport to get to areas well-served by public transport.

The initiative behind the ULEZ in particular is that it is a strong disincentive to owning/using a car at all in these areas, not just one that happens to be an old banger. Doubly so when considered on top of the congestion charge.

I think mostly what they do is stop kids breathing carbon particulates.

Not really, some of the worst offenders are exempt: delivery vehicles and luxury large engine cars.

Here's a list of ULEZ exemptions [1]. I don't see any mention of delivery vehicles or luxury cars.

[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/dis...

Luxury/sport vehicles tend to be new enough to be at least euro 6, despite having very large engines and often fewer seats, thus much higher volume of emissions per passenger compared to a small older car. Also, the fixed fee hardly matters for rich people, so even old luxury/sports cars are de facto exempt.

Taxis are exempt, despite plenty being diesels older than even euro 4.

Plenty of delivery vans with significant emissions are de facto exempt because the fee is negligible when compared to other expenses.

If the fee was at least a percentage of income/revenue or a percentage of the value of the vehicle, it would be a bit less bad. If it also scaled measured emissions by passenger instead of using the flawed emission standards, then it might even become useful. If it also included free vehicle replacements funded with revenue from the taxes on the excessive cars, then it might even be good.

Isn't that the point of those laws? It isn't royalty, politicians, or the wealthy drive around in 23 year old clunkers that can barely pass a road safety test. No one passes law like this and announces "The Queen of England herself will now have to replace her 1993 Toyota Corolla!"

Yes.

This, mixed with the artist class pretending that poor people don't own cars, because they don't in their flatshare.

Poor or middle-class people in London don't generally buy or own cars.

Approximately 50% of London households have at least one car.

You need to invent a new class to put them (and me) in, I guess.

Flatshare people mostly don't, that's basically it. The council estates are full of cars. If you were here it would be obvious.

> If you were here it would be obvious

"Here?" I don't know what you think you're saying; but you should not assume that you know me; who or where I am. Yeah there are lots of cars in London; there are even more people.

I see also you're throwing out random numbers (50% according to who? ) that even if true, don't directly relate to or contradict what I said - "households" are not "people", "people" are not the same stat as "poor people", car owners are not evenly distributed, and IDK why "Flatshare people" are something subhuman that you scorn and exclude from counts.

TfL have official information on this, it's not a random number.

I'm not doing your research for you. The poor and middle class do drive in London. If you think otherwise you're simply mistaken, even in a back of the envelope sense. There are over 2 million cars in London, I don't know who you think owns them if not ordinary people.

> The poor and middle class do drive in London.

I didn't say that "it doesn't happen" just that it's not prevalent.

> There are over 2 million cars in London

Did you notice that the number of people in London is a multiple of that? "ordinary people" is broad, do you think that it varies within that, and varies in sync with disposable income, or is evenly distributed?

From Your own source at https://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-a... :

> "Londoners are more likely to own a car if they live in outer London, live in an area with poor access to public transport, have a higher income, have a child in the house, and are of Western European nationality."

have a higher income , household car access rises as income increases, live out in the suburbs.

No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians, to lower the burden of traffic for the wealthy.

Poor people in London are already pedestrians.

I think most people would be happier if they could drive less and had fewer cars to contend with while walking.

Forcing people to be pedestrians would be likely a significant improvement for their health and quality of life.

As an American in a major city, the alternative sucks. I'm forced to be a driver, car costs eat a significant portion of my income, my neighborhood doesn't even have sidewalks between the residences and shops (which are across a highway that has a cross walk with no sidewalk leading up to it), and I end up having to drive at least 5 hours every week just to work and get my kids to and from school. This increases pollution in my city and comes with a regular risk of injury and death from a car accident, which is one of the leading causes of preventable death.

I'd rather be forced to be a pedestrian than a driver. Having the choice would really be great.

There are a ton of pedestrian friendly cities in the US. Is it less viable/desirable to move to a new town than it is to force poor people back onto the bus?

There really aren't, proportionally. Most of the cities are not reasonable to live in without owning a car.

And I'd rather if the bus was an option at all. The bus is expensive and unreliable in most US cities. Getting somewhere by car that takes 20 minutes can take hours by bus due to scheduling. This is a stark contrast to London, which has an actual public transit system.

Maybe I'm biased by living in Colorado Springs, where it might be particularly bad, but cities with sprawling suburbs are usually terrible for living without a car, and the US has tons of suburbs.

proportionally, sure, but there are a lot of cities you can live without owning a car in the united states. Just about every metropolitan area and nearly any city over 150k people on the west coast seem to be navigable by at most a bike.

Point not without merit, but I’d say there are quite few pedestrian-friendly places in this country unless your standards for that are very low. Most pedestrian-friendly areas might be limited to a couple blocks downtown with a little or no decent non-luxury housing available.

I think adding more pedestrian-friendly places, or at least stopping building ones that are outright hostile to everyone but car-drivers, is very important.

> No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians,

Poor people in London already mostly do not own cars. And also they disproportionately suffer the negative effects of pollution from cars. (1)

If by "pedestrians" you mean people who get around on foot, on bicycles, on busses, on London Underground trains, on overground trains, in taxis, Minicabs and Ubers then sure, they are "pedestrians" .

In my case, if I needed a car I could arrange to buy one, but where would I put it, how would I secure it and what would I do with it? It would be nothing than an expressive source of hassle and worry. It's cheaper and less hassle to use busses to commute, cabs or ubers when I need to travel other short distances, rental cars a couple of times per year.

Groceries? There's a small shop in walking distance that way, and others in walking distance the other way, and a similar near the office, but the main shopping _comes to me_ not vice versa.

1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/poorest-...

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