Tackling transport demand requires conviction, and sometimes a little ruthlessness

Livingstone, the former mayor of London, had some interesting insights into how he was able to get the congestion charge through, and the event also brought an admission from the automotive industry that average emissions from new cars can easily be cut to 95g of CO 2 per kilometre by 2020.

For seven years I wondered if I’d been a little unfair on Livingstone. In February 2003, a few days after the London congestion charge had been introduced, I wrote an opinion piece for this publication in which I said the personality of Ken Livingstone was the single most important factor in getting the initially unpopular charge into reality.

To quote from that piece: ‘Livingstone is not a conventional politician, he takes risks by alienating people, including many of his own supporters … He thrives on confrontation…Those who work with him say he is dictatorial in the way he operates, but this has been an advantage in dismissing the many attempts to declare his congestion charge illegal, unconstitutional, inequitable, unworkable, etc.’

When he spoke at T&E’s 20th birthday event last month on how he got the charge through, he confirmed my view. His speech included this section: ‘As we got near implementation, I knew I needed people around me who I could trust, and who were tough. To be honest, some of the people I had working at the heart of the project were people you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night.’

This illustrates the conviction policymakers need to bring about bold measures in the transport sector. The idea of congestion charging had been sold within ‘green’ circles well before 2003, but the public was deeply sceptical.

For it to happen, it needed some great determination, to the point where Livingstone effectively admitted that he had to be ruthless in getting something through that people would oppose until they had seen it work. Once they had seen it work, they voted for it by giving Livingstone a second term in office a year later, just as the voters of Stockholm voted for their congestion charge after trying it for seven months, but the voters of Edinburgh and Manchester rejected their proposed charges because the votes took place before the charges had come into effect.

Not everything has to be sold through referendums. The German national road charging scheme for lorries, France’s recent extension of motorway charging, registration taxes for new cars in Denmark and the British company car tax system are all examples of policies introduced in the normal run of government business outside of referendums and elections.

But it does seem clear that the public needs to see the benefits of proposed measures before they will give them their full backing.

The automotive industry is also now seeing the benefits of environmental legislation that they protested loudly about before its introduction.

Another speaker at T&E’s conference, Jean-Luc di Paola Galloni of Valeo, reported that the cars/CO 2 regulation is already creating a boom for high-tech suppliers of CO2 reduction technology two years before it comes into force.

He said the market for Valeo’s CO 2 reduction technology will be worth €5 billion by 2020, 10 times what it’s worth now, and that the longer term target of 95g/km is achievable with technology already developed.

That’s a win/win situation which the carmakers might like to bear in mind before they issue their latest cry of ‘It can’t be done’.