Perhaps they should make buses prohibitively expensive too, then everyone would be forced to either walk or bike to work/school.

Am I missing something here? Obviously if you apply sin taxes to driving then people who can't afford to pay them are going to be forced to drive less. I bet there would be plenty of "surprising benefits" if we banned all road vehicles and forced people to get around on foot and push bike too...

This article seems to be both making an extremely obvious observation (that the introduction of ULEZ is forcing poor families to get around the city in alternative ways) and missing the fact that such decisions come with both positives and negatives which need to be weighed up.

If we simply want to implement policies to benefit children's health then we'd probably be better off banning junk food. But we don't do that because we understand that there are trade-offs.

ULEZ has been a disaster for many working families and it's highly unpopular for a reason. If you're poor and don't live in the inner city, or if you don't have a nice middle-class office job and need your car/van for work then ULEZ makes you poorer and your life more difficult.