While greens (and tax collectors) the world over have hailed London's Congestion Charge (CG), the scheme is far from the showpiece legislation its proponents suggest, and it's about to get worse. The Times reports that London's traffic has returned to pre-CG levels. Even less surprisingly, well-paid bureaucrats swallow a full 47 percent of the £800m raised by the CG– to the point where London has cut bus subsidies. At the same time, "The introduction of more bus lanes and pedestrian-friendly measures, TfL [Transport for London] admits, have also contributed to congestion." And now The Evening Standard reports that the recent tweak to the system– adding low CO2 cars like the Fiat Panda and Ford Fiesta to the hybrids who get a free pass– threatens to hole its income. As you (but not London Mayor Ken Livingstone) might imagine, the city cars' exemption from the £8 daily fee has sparked a boom in small car sales. I'm sorry, did I say £8? As part of the tweak, "gas guzzlers" will have to pay £25 a day to drive in inner London. Anyway, a study commissioned by Land Rover (for obvious reasons) reckons that the Mayor's plan to give A and B-class cars a free ride could add an extra 10k cars to London's traffic and "contribute to global warming" (way to stick the boot in).
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Gotta love it. The folks trying to do the social engineering are completely resistent to it. Perhaps if they just fired all the social engineers they would stay home. The combination of less traffic with less hot air may solve the whole global warming issue once and for all.
Shows what happens when you entangle congestion policy with fuel consumption policy. Now that California allows hybrids into the freeway carpool lanes, just about any SUV with two occupants has the right to flip off a single occupant Prius as being a minion of Big Oil.
I think both you and this article are being a little selective in interpreting the facts.
If you actually look at the numbers quoted you’ll find that traffic is still a little better than pre-CG levels. Given that this is true despite a big increase in the number of bus lanes, introducing more traffic lights and phasing the traffic lights in favour of pedestrians not cars, I’d say the congestion charge is having some benefits. You seem to be of the mistaken impression that all city transport policy is supposed to benefit drivers.
As for the money side of things, that does sound pretty questionable. The wonders of P3s strike again. However it is hardly a surprise that the RAC would claim that the sky is falling when you consider who pays their wages.
(Disclaimer: former Londoner, not living there anymore. Love driving, but always thought London could use less bloody cars.)
A while back Jeremy Clarkson mentioned on Top Gear a number of high end cars being registered as taxis to get around the congestion charge as well.
sitting@home stole my thunder. For some reason, politicians don’t seem to understand that a tool that works for one problem (congestion pricing to capture incremental trip costs) doesn’t mean it works for other problems (encouraging less fuel use).
Or maybe we’ve been addicted to massively-subsidized automotive transportation for so long that there are no good (AND politically-acceptable) solutions…
When I was in London last June I noticed that the traffic in the Financial District was non-existent. It felt like a holiday down there. Perhaps the traffic has always been light down there. I dunno. Make the place seem kind of sterile and dead.
gee, a newspaper owned by libertarian lunatic murdoch is reporting that congestion taxes suck. well, more buses and fewer cars sounds good to me. the point of a congestion tax isn’t to make things easier for car commuters, it’s to make a city more livable for its residents. please, please, bring a congestion tax to new york. and yes, i am a car owner.
I miss interpreted the percent of the charges as being paid by government employees instead of being paid to them. Come to think of it, that wouldn’t likely be possible. Still it would be funny.
You seem to be of the mistaken impression that all city transport policy is supposed to benefit drivers.
Very good point! When you have THOUSANDS of pedestrians crossing streets in every direction it is actually the relatively few cars (compared to the pedestrians)that are intefering with the flow of “people” traffic.
I was born and raised in NYC, yet for the majority of my life I lived in an area of NYC were NO commerical traffic was allowed. Plain and simple, No Trucks, Buses, or commerical vehicles of any kind unless they were there to deliver something or do work.
So as we can see there have always been traffic and vehicular restriction in New York. What is so different about restricting the types of vehicles that enter the most conjested parts of our cities?
It takes a year. When city toll rings are established around major metropolitan areas (and I pass one every day) it takes a year for peoples’ habits and expectations to accommodate to it.
During the course of that year, people reexamine their use of the car, consider what other kind of car to purchase when times come to trade in the one they have, and generally adapt and adopt.
It’s way too soon to tell as far as London is concerned — particularly as the Brits don’t really like being told what to do … but the traffic situation in London is so abominable that any improvement will be received with gratitude.