London receives ‘poor’ score in ranking of clean transport European cities
By Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said officials are working to boost electric car clubs in London after the capital received a “poor” score in a recent ranking of clean transport in European cities.
London was placed 24th out of 42 major cities across the continent in a July report published by the Clean Cities Campaign, which looked specifically at zero-emission mobility.
The analysis looked at availability of shared bikes and e-scooters, shared electric cars, zero-emission buses and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.
The area in which London performed the worst was in the number of shared electric cars available, at just 0.05 per 1000 people.
This figure helped drag London’s overall ranking below cities like Budapest in Hungary which ranked 17th and Sofia in Bulgaria which ranked 20th.
The top five cities were Copenhagen, Oslo, Paris, Amsterdam, then Hamburg.
At the other end of the list, three of the bottom five cities were British including Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Greater Manchester. London was the highest-ranked UK city on the list.
The issue was raised in a recent written question to the mayor by Caroline Pidgeon, a Liberal Democrat on the London Assembly.
Ms Pidgeon said London’s overall score was “a poor performance compared to other European capitals including Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris”.
The mayor said Transport for London (TfL) has “included reference to car clubs in communications campaigns about the London-wide Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) and has updated the TfL website to point users to car club operators and clearly signposts to their resources”.
He said: “TfL is supporting boroughs to deliver rapid charge points on their land as well as substantially expanding lower powered charge point provision, including in car club parking bays, using the nearly £39million allocated to London from the government’s London Electric Vehicle Infrastructure fund.”
London’s highest scores were in areas of zero-emission buses, with a comparatively high proportion of its fleet being fully electric, at 11 per cent, and in the provision of EV charging point.
(Picture: Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporting Service)