Portable emissions boundary to be carried by enforcement officer walking three metres behind resident
London officials have unveiled a mobile charging zone capable of following individual residents wherever they go - a personal ULEZ zone that, its inventors insist, closes a fairness gap the real scheme was never actually designed to have.
PULEZ: the concept
The Personal Ultra-Low Emission Zone, or PULEZ, replaces traditional geographic boundaries with a council employee carrying a laminated circle. Whenever the employee catches up with you, you are inside the zone. "This solves the fairness problem," explained transport strategist Amelia Cone. "Previously somebody could simply leave a charging area." "Under PULEZ, the charging area leaves with them."
Residents are assigned a Portable Boundary Officer based on surname. Officers operate Monday to Friday and alternate Saturdays. Premium enforcement is available Sundays. The concept emerged from consultants who concluded fixed boundaries were "insufficiently dynamic." The consultants were paid £3.8 million. Their final report contained one diagram. It was a circle with legs.
Who counts as "potentially vehicular"
The new system initially applies to pedestrians considered potentially vehicular. Criteria include walking quickly, carrying keys or saying "beep beep" while moving through crowds. Roller skates create automatic liability. Shopping trolleys are assessed individually. Prams require registration but receive a parental grace period until 2028. Cyclists asked whether they are included. Officials replied that consultations are continuing. Cyclists immediately formed two opposing organisations.
Resident Henry Moss discovered his personal zone Tuesday morning. "I left the house and this bloke followed me." The bloke was enforcement officer Graham. "He was carrying a sign saying CLEAN AIR." Moss accelerated. Graham accelerated. Moss turned down an alley. Graham followed. "I asked what he wanted." "He said £12.50." Moss took the Tube. Graham waited at the destination.
Officials say the system encourages behavioural change. Moss says it encourages sprinting. Local gyms have welcomed the scheme after membership increased 18 percent among residents hoping to outrun enforcement. One chain now advertises ULEZ Escape Training: interval running, bureaucratic evasion, and learning to distinguish a camera van from an ice-cream van at 200 metres.
The reality behind the joke
Genuine enforcement, of course, works nothing like this. TfL's real ULEZ relies on fixed automatic number-plate-recognition cameras rather than officers on foot, and its financial consequences are entirely real: freedom-of-information figures reported by trade press show TfL collecting tens of millions of pounds annually in ULEZ penalty fines from drivers who simply don't pay the daily charge. No laminated circle required.
The PULEZ application asks residents to declare estimated weekly walking mileage. Anyone exceeding 30 miles must register as a fleet. Families of six require commercial accounts. Dogs are treated as trailers. Cats remain exempt because officials were unable to make them cooperate with consultation.
The council insists no decision has been taken on expanding PULEZ nationwide. However, tender documents have already been issued for 46 million laminated circles. Opposition councillors asked why. Officials said the purchase represents "future resilience." Another £11 million has been allocated to a smartphone app showing residents where their personal zone currently is. The answer is: around them. The app has received two stars. One reviewer wrote, "Opened app. Discovered myself." A second wrote, "Keeps charging me while I'm on sofa." Developers replied: "Thanks for your feedback. We're working on it!"
By Friday the system faced an unexpected problem. Enforcement officers began following one another. Graham entered Amelia's zone. Amelia entered Graham's. Both issued notices. Each appealed. The computer rejected both. A tribunal hearing is scheduled for November. Transport economists describe this as encouraging. For the first time, the bureaucracy has begun charging itself. Londoners have requested that nobody interfere.
Graham, for his part, says the whole experience has given him a new appreciation for what residents go through. "You don't understand a zone until you've been inside one," he said, moments after Amelia handed him a second notice for loitering within his own jurisdiction. Amelia declined to comment, citing an ongoing appeal against herself.
The council says a full review of the PULEZ pilot will be published "in due course," a phrase officials confirmed does not, itself, fall within the scope of any current or future charging zone.
In the meantime, several residents have taken to walking in pairs, on the theory that a shared journey might be assessed as a single vehicle and therefore attract only one charge. Officials have neither confirmed nor denied whether this loophole exists, which locals have taken as tacit confirmation that it probably does, for now. A market has already sprung up for "zone buddies," strangers who agree to walk closely together purely to share a notional emissions burden. Rates for a reliable buddy currently run to around £8 a trip, considerably cheaper than the £12.50 the zone itself would otherwise charge, and with the added benefit of company.
Graham says he has started to recognise some of the same faces walking together every morning. He has not yet decided whether to report it.
A tribunal ruling on the Graham-versus-Amelia dispute is now expected to set precedent for the entire scheme, and several enforcement officers are reportedly watching the case closely, less out of professional curiosity than out of simple self-preservation. https://prat.uk/?p=48500
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