You'll Now Be Charged Extra To Drive An Old Car Into London

You’ll now be charged even more if you want to drive an old car into London. Pass the roadside signs in a car whose emission standards are Euro III or earlier and you’ll have to pay a total of £21.50 for every day you do so. This is the new London T-Charge.

The extra tenner on top of the existing £11.50 Congestion Charge will go straight to London’s coffers, but it’s not yet clear what the money will be spent on. Rough estimates put the number of drivers affected by the extra tax as 6500 per day. That’s theoretically an extra couple of million rolling in annually.

Aimed at cutting nitrogen oxide levels by half after two years, which it will probably do as effectively as the Congestion Charge cut traffic (i.e. not so you’d notice), the T-Charge affects the exact same area as the Congestion Charge – for now.

Environmental campaigners and people who like to write angry things on the Internet are calling for the T-Charge zone to be expanded in 2019 to cover all of Greater London from the North Circular to the South Circular roads. That, as anyone who knows the city will tell you, covers the vast majority of places that you might actually want to get to.

While cars will be lumbered with the £10 charge, coaches, buses and HGVs will have to stump up £100 per day. Expect those Megabus and National Express prices to look steep next time you book.