T&E Board member, Malcolm Fergusson, lives and works in London. He kept a diary of the first weeks of London’s congestion charge for T&E.
Contents
Monday 17/2 ; Tues 18/2 ; Wed 19/2 ; Thurs 20/2 ; Fri 21/2
Mon 24/2 ; Tues 25/2 ; Wed 26/2 ; Thurs 27/2 ; Fri 28/2
Mon 3/3-Fri 7/3
Mon 10/3-Fri 14/3
Mon 17/3-Fri 21/3
The congestion charge starts tomorrow, and I am acutely aware of how important this is. If it works, others cities will follow; if it fails, it could set back traffic demand management for years, or even decades. As a Londoner and a T&E board member, in an odd way I feel personally responsible for the success or failure of the scheme, though there is not much I can do to affect the outcome either way. As it is, I already risk my life on a daily basis to cycle the 11 kilometres to my office.
And I am all too well aware of how many things could go wrong. In order to get the scheme up and running quickly, the Mayor chose a fairly low-technology option: computer-controlled cameras are supposed to recognise the registration plate of every car entering the zone, and check it against the national registration database and a list of people who have paid their charge. This could be a problem, as our national vehicle registration database is held on the world’s only coal-fired computer.
To make matters worse, the Central Line (the orange metro line which runs right across the city) has been closed for several weeks for repairs and safety checks after a major accident, causing extra strain on a creaking network. It was recently confirmed that the line will not reopen in time for the start of the congestion charge – a nightmare scenario. Transport for London has announced that the scheme will go ahead anyway, arguing that this will help the replacement bus service to run faster. That was brave spin on what I hope will prove to have been a brave decision.
And of course there is widespread opposition to charging. Most of the newspapers are completely opposed to the idea, and have been running at least one bad news story every day for weeks, predicting that the scheme will fail, that it will ruin London’s economy, that there will be increased congestion and pollution, that there will be traffic chaos on the edge of the zone, etcetera, etcetera. If the press is to be believed, we should probably expect to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding down Whitehall tomorrow morning. If so, they at least will not have any problems with the new technology, as there is no charge for horses.
Late news announced that the first penalty notices were issued today – unfortunate, given that the scheme does not start until tomorrow. Still, this sort of mistake appeals to the English sense of humour. We will probably be OK if all the foul-ups are as silly as this one.
Day dawns with a new storm of adverse press; more promises of traffic chaos at the edge of the zone, rising pollution, mass protests and general disaster. However these headlines start to look very foolish very quickly, as it is very quickly becoming clear that there has been no chaos at all. The scheme has deliberately been introduced when most schools are on holiday, so traffic was always likely to be low, but what has happened has exceeded all expectations. The forecast was for a 10 to 15% traffic reduction, but what we got is apparently 25% down on normal levels.
In fact I did not cycle to work today; unusually, I drove across north London outside the zone, and the traffic there seemed quite light too. I was tempted to drive into the zone just for the hell of it, but that didn’t seem like an environmentally sound thing to do. I realized later that I should have just bought a permit and not used it; perhaps permits dated 17 February 2003 will be collectors’ items one day.
So, the newspapers have nearly all looked foolish – even some of the grown-up ones. One has had the decency to admit it had been wrong, but the others have already begun a desperate search for new problems to complain about and more bad news stories. Starting the scheme during school holidays is now seen to be cheating somehow; and they have begun to argue that the real chaos will be next week, when all the schoolkids are back. It is all rather lame stuff, however. As the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has gleefully pointed out, they all became so convinced of the rightness of their own arguments that they didn't seem to have a ‘plan B’ of what to do if the scheme actually worked.
Today I am back to work, and I decide to cycle straight through the City to see how things look. Normally I would avoid this at all costs, but today the effect is actually quite eerie. Because of the compounding effect of congestion, the level of traffic looks far less even than what has been claimed; it is like going into work on a Sunday. Also the sun is shining (unusual weather for February) and I cycle hands-free down Whitehall (unusual behaviour for a sane person, at least in normal traffic). But this is not a usual week, and life feels very good.
Today I did my bit to publicise the success of the new scheme by giving a television interview for an international news network. We carried out the interview in a park near the Houses of Parliament. We were only 10 metres from the roadside and I didn't have to shout. Incredible!
Of course not everybody is a winner. There are some people who genuinely need to drive into the zone and are not well paid, and few concessions have been made to these. Also there are still protests going on every day; these are not very large, but they are guaranteed a lot of publicity. Fortunately for the Mayor, though, the most vocal complaints seem to be coming from rich people who now have to pay to drive the Bentley down to Harrods. They are not capturing the nation’s sympathy.
The TV presenter who interviewed me told me afterwards that they had also asked for an interview with the protest leader, but she had refused to meet the TV crew because she never travels by public transport. I guess that just about sums it up.
One worry this week for a cyclist is that some motorists and motorcyclists seem to be driving much too fast now that it is possible to get out of first gear, and this may need to be addressed if accident rates start to increase.
So it is perhaps no coincidence that today I saw my first accident casualty, or that he was a moped rider. Motorcycles and mopeds, like bicycles, do not have to pay the charge. I think I am seeing more cyclists on the roads, but there are definitely more motorcyclists and a lot more moped riders. I suspect that many of the latter bought a moped only recently in response to the charge, as they seem to wobble about a lot.
I do not think it was a good idea to exempt motorised two-wheelers, as they emit more pollution and will probably have more accidents. Perhaps in future they will be charged, but at a lower rate than the full €8. LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) vehicles are also exempt, and I cannot see why; they do not seem to me to cause any less congestion than all the other cars.
Another beautiful day; far too warm for February. Today we had a staff meeting at work, and it was so warm that we had to have the windows open in our meeting room. Normally everybody has to shout if we do this, but today we could still hear just fine as there was so little traffic outside. This is obviously another ‘external cost’ that is now being covered.
So if the critics are right, today will be the real crunch for the new scheme. Will we at last have the chaos and mayhem that so many hope to see? Well, no. There seems to be a bit more traffic than last week, but the jam at the edge of the charging zone at the point where I enter it is still far shorter than on a normal Monday, and only a few cars longer than last week.
Today I had a meeting at the Department for Transport, which is near my office. I was able to walk across Horseferry Road diagonally, slashing seconds off my journey time. Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the traffic lights outside our transport ministry have no pedestrian phase? This is not a problem today, though, as you don’t need traffic lights when there is no traffic.
I was pleased to find that most of the officials I spoke to at the Department are as delighted with the apparent success of the scheme as I am, and one told me she was thinking of taking up cycling. We discussed good routes across town, although admittedly this was a rather short conversation. Unfortunately nobody in government is allowed to say anything positive about the scheme in public, as our New Labour ministers all hate the Mayor so much that they are not sure if they want the scheme to succeed or fail.
Apparently traffic yesterday was still down 20% on normal levels. Although it is still too early to be sure, this looks more like what a ‘normal’ Monday will look like from now on, and the reduction in traffic is still far more than predicted.
The only problem with this is that if the scheme is too effective, it will not raise enough money for new buses and road improvements.
Today I saw my first commercial advertisement specifically aimed at congestion charge payers. It was a picture of a shiny new red moped, under the caption ‘Make Ken See Red’. This is actually very clever, although it probably does not translate very well.*
Ironically this advert was on the back of a bus, which was also red, and also avoids the congestion charge. Unfortunately, though, bus operators can rarely afford such good advertising agencies.
Apparently the buses are having to spend extra time at bus stops to avoid arriving ahead of schedule. This is not a problem that they have often had to face up to in London for some years past. If this continues, they will reschedule the bus timetables and then, presumably, they will be able to run more services with the same number of buses. And already there is fairly good evidence that bus use is increasing. Marvellous!
The end of the second week, and now confidence seems to be growing that things are going well. Already all the talk is of extending the geographical scope of the scheme, although this is rather premature. Coincidentally, though, I have just noticed that the sign boards at the edge of the scheme refer to the ‘Congestion Charge Central Zone’ – are other zones already being planned?
Still the weather is much warmer and brighter than normal at this time of year, contributing to a general ‘feel good factor’ in town as people stroll along quiet streets and across the parks. Perhaps Mayor Ken has more powerful supporters than we realised.
Apparently traffic was still on average 20% down last week; but where have all the motorists gone? There are a lot of detailed studies being carried out to give us a proper analysis of what is happening, but it will be some time before these can give us a definite picture. Already, though, it seems clear that the scheme is exceeding expectations in cutting traffic, but it is far less clear how. I suspect that we will find that there will be no single or simple explanation for the drop in traffic, and that people will have adopted a wide and flexible range of responses to the charge.
On Monday morning I came into London by rail, as I was out of town for the weekend. The train was late and the tube was packed, so that was pretty much business as usual. Even if all the commuters who have disappeared from the roads have transferred to rail (which they probably haven’t), they will be virtually undetectable in the normal rush hour crowds.
On Tuesday morning, the traffic lights at a major road junction by Lambeth Bridge were out of action. Normally this would bring much of south London to a standstill, but today the traffic was flowing better without the lights than it normally does with them. Perhaps they'll be able to stop repairing traffic lights altogether. That would be a vote-winner, and would save a lot of money and effort.
It is amazing how quickly road charging has become the normal way of things, and a new opinion poll shows that public opinion is already shifting significantly in favour of the scheme. The main downside is that most people still do not trust that the money raised will really be spent on better public transport. This is rather unfair, as Transport for London’s plans for spending the charging revenues are quite clear. The only problem would be if central government were to cut their grants to compensate for the extra income, and they couldn’t be that cynical, could they?
It turns out that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has neglected to register for his resident’s discount for Number 10, and has had to pay a €1500 fine. Well, he has had a lot on his mind recently; it cannot be easy having to keep thinking up new reasons for wanting to invade Iraq.
This week T&E held its AGM in Brussels. This was accompanied by a seminar on road pricing, at which Vicky Cann of Transport 2000 set out how well things seem to be going. It seems ironic now that, when we were planning the event, we were not sure whether she would have to deliver a success story or a post mortem. In the event, she was able to be far more upbeat than either of us would have dared to hope
Her presentation generated a lot of interest and enthusiasm, showing that even an imperfect scheme can be successful if it has the right political backing. The main things are that it is in operation, and it is working, not only to curb traffic and get the buses running faster, but also to generate new revenues to fund extra public transport. With this success to build on, it seems much more likely that other capital cities will now follow suit. Next stop, Stockholm?
As all eyes turn to the war in Iraq, the Department for Transport has decided that the central government grant to Transport for London will be cut by €190 million per year. Coincidentally, this corresponds almost exactly to the expected income from the congestion charge.
* ‘Ken’ is the Mayor of London, commonly known as ‘Red Ken’ on account of his radical views, and to ‘see red’ means to get angry. So the idea is that you can annoy the Mayor, and save a lot of money, by buying a little red moped which avoids being charged.