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Capital expenditure
Page 21
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Plans for a Low Emission Zone and an expanded Congestion Zone will make London even more expensive for hauliers. Chris Tindall reports.
For haulage firms based within the M25,or those which make deliveries into the capital, costs are set to soar from 2008, when mayor Ken Livingstone's plans for a Low Emission Zone (LEZ) are put into practice.
And that's not including the westward expansion of the central London congestion charge zone from September 2006.
Transport for London (TIL) and the stakeholders involved in proposals for a Euro-3 minimum standard all agree that facts are in scant supply. But we do know that in less than two years, any HGV whose emissions fail to meet the Euro-3 standard will have to pay to enter Greater London.
No one is saying how much, but TfL suggests the amount will be lower than the cost of fitting a particulate trap,but high enough to make an operator think twice about not fitting one, Sources therefore suggest the cost will be £200 each time you enter the zone, with a fine of as much as £1,000 if you fail to pay up (CM 22 September). The Freight Transport Association (FTA) believes there will be relatively few problems with the Euro-3 benchmark— by 2008 Euro-3 trucks will have been on the market for seven years (see panel).
However, the mayor's proposals also mention a shift to the Euro-4 standard in the LEZ by 2010. Engines meeting this tougher standard will not be widely available until next year. So in effect the mayor is giving notice that by 2010 he doesn't want commercial vehicles more than four years old entering his city.
"[TfL1 is only going to tell us in spring/summer 2007 about the rules," says the ETA's Geoff Day.
However, Day asks why these plans will not affect vans immediately. "We are concerned at the unfaimess,concerned at the fact it's another tax on vehicles in London and very concerned about the 2010 proposal," he adds TfL stresses these are only proposals. But it has researched the cost to operators and reckons on an eye-watering compliance cost of £195m-£27Gm.
And TfL has yet to grapple with issues including the results from a TIE survey of 750 operators, which revealed— unsurprisingly—that it's smaller operators using older trucks who are most concerned by the mayor's proposals.
The prospect of enforcement with foreign vehicles is a further cause for concern."We will require foreign hauliers to register... and it will be enforced like the congestion charge through the capture of registration numbers," says a TfL spokesman. However, he admits this could involve"going around the houses" in order to penalise foreign operators caught trying to dodge the cost. •