ULEZ in court and bus drivers in the heat

Hello,

Two topics this week:

• ULEZ court case

• Overheating bus drivers

The Mayor’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) finally had its day in court last week, with 5 Conservative councils taking the Mayor’s decision to the High Court to argue that it was unlawful.

The four London boroughs of Harrow, Hillingdon, Bromley, and Bexley along with Surrey County Council put their case to Mr Justice Swift. The main arguments were:

1. The expansion is so large and into an area of London that’s so different from central London that it can’t be treated as a variation of an existing scheme, it’s really a whole new scheme.

2. People couldn’t take part in the consultation properly, because important information was kept secret, while the information that was published was spread across many separate documents and appendices. And even when you found it, it was hard to understand.

3. The scrappage scheme should have included people just outside London who’re affected by ULEZ but not eligible, and how did the Mayor decide that £110 million was the right amount when even now he’s still arguing about how many cars are affected?

The hearing has now finished and the judge is considering his verdict. He acknowledged that time is pressing so said he hoped to publish his decision before the end of the month.

For more info, yesterday the BBC published a longer summary of the court case here:

What did we learn from ULEZ court action?

With all his focus on ULEZ, here’s a serious problem the Mayor should be tackling but isn’t.

In the summer heat, London bus drivers will tell you the temperature in their cab easily gets above 40C, making it hard to stay alert to drive. Many buses either have no air conditioning for the drivers, or it doesn’t work.

In last month’s hot weather, one bus swerved off the road, narrowly missed a bus stop, across the pavement, and ended up in the front garden of a block of flats. Passengers report that the driver had passed out due to the heat and came back around after they came to a stop. It’s pure chance no one was seriously injured.

The aftermath, as reported in the local newspaper:

In the same week, I was send a video of a driver of a 147 passed out on the floor of his own bus, again reportedly because of heat.

This isn’t a new problem, here’s a story from 5 years ago::

TfL London bus driver claims temperatures in his cab reached 48C during heatwave (2018)

Bus drivers regularly report that the air conditioning in their cab either doesn’t exist or doesn’t work, so they’re left with just a blower. All that does is move the heat around. It’s a shoddy way to treat their drivers, and it’s an obvious road safety problem.

I challenged The Mayor and the TfL Commissioner over this on Thursday, but they kept talking about “ventilation” which means either an open window or a blower to move the heat around. Or else long term plans to work with the bus manufacturers. But summer is now and this problem has been reported for years.

Watch on YouTube

The Mayor is fond of telling us that climate change means we all need to adapt to more extreme weather, and he is cutting the speed limit of every TfL-controlled road (aka red route) to 20mph because he says safety is his top priority.

If that’s true, why isn’t he interested in looking after his own bus drivers, and the road safety of those of us sharing the road with them in the heat? As usual, he’s happy to boss other people around but less interested in doing something himself.

That’s it for this week, please do share my City Hall Diary with someone you think may find it interesting