4x4 congestion charge call

Environment and transport campaigners have called on Transport for London to raise the city’s congestion charge to £20 for 4x4s and other high-emission vehicles, in a bid to keep up the good work achieved by the scheme so far. Members of Greenpeace and the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s took to the streets to carry out their protest, hanging a banner across Marylebone High Street.

Currently, private vehicle owners are charged £5 to enter the central congestion charge zone.

"Vehicle owners must take full responsibility for the choices they make. If they insist on buying an urban four-wheel drive, they need to pay more for that choice, and a £20 congestion charge would do that,” said Sian Berry of the Alliance. “The increasing use of big 4x4s in London threatens to undo all the good that the congestion charge has done in reducing traffic and improving our air quality and quality of life. The children being ferried around in these monsters today will have to pay for the effects of climate change tomorrow."

The call comes after fellow green group Friends of the Earth’s demand that high-emission / low MPG vehicles should face a stricter level of road tax, and the existing tax bands should be revised to incentivise greener purchases,

Mark Strutt of Greenpeace added; "Most of these 4x4s have seen less off-road action than the average milk float, but the CO2 they throw into the atmosphere is contributing to the gravest threat this planet faces.”