Active Planet: London to ban SUV's?

In Venice, all vehicles capable of using four wheel drive are banned, even if they are running in two-wheel drive mode. So the Fiat Panda 4WD is barred whilst a Maserati is not.

Livingstone plans a major upheaval of the charging regime for London - to bite from the 27th October 2008.

Cars are already graded into "bands" dependent on their emissions. The current charge of GBP8 simply for being in the zone (it's not dependent on whether a car enters the zone during the restricted hours - even being parked on the side of the road for the whole charging period incurs the charge) will be substantially altered.

Any car registered before 1 March 2001 and with an engine more than 3 litres will have to pay GBP25 per day. That's all Range Rover, Land Rover and many Mercedes and Jaguar models. And for newer cars, those in band G will suffer the same. Currently, residents in the restricted zone have a 90% discount. They will lose that - although if they keep their cars off the road during the restricted hours (currently 7 am to 6 pm) they would not, under current rules, pay.

Many of the current exemptions and discounts will be removed or reduced.

For cars that do not carry the new charge, the existing charging structure will still apply.

The Mayor says that the changes will bring in substantial additional revenue for Transport for London - up to GBP50 million.

But some will be sceptical - in December a London newspaper ran an article citing the Mayor for passing substantial sums of money to pet schemes run by long standing friends, many of whom had failed to deliver on any or most of the reasons for the grants. The concern in London will be how much of the money actually gets spent on transport.

London's public transport is already extremely expensive - and bus routes have, in recent years, been shortened so that changes are necessary even in journeys in a straight line along a continuous road - for example from Queensway to the City. It is not possible to purchase a through ticket which means that two fares must be paid for a journey that is, in reality, just one trip.

If the extra money were to be applied to the reduction of bus and tube fares (which are also extremely high) then few would complain.