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Congestion Charging

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Telegraph: Motoring

The true cost of a fiver

(Filed: 21/02/2004)

A year on since the congestion charge was introduced in London, James Foxall looks at its effects on the capital, and considers its proposed expansion

Five pounds doesn't amount to much nowadays. It'll buy you little more than a gallon of petrol and in many pubs it won't even buy you two pints of lager and a packet of crisps. But for many car drivers, residents and businesses in Britain, the humble fiver has taken on a far greater significance than its monetary value.

It was thanks to £5 that Monday February 17, 2003, became a momentous day in British motoring history. An otherwise unremarkable, grey winter's morning heralded London's moment in the world spotlight as it became the first European capital city to tackle its road transport problems head-on. In an unprecedented move, it forced drivers to pay for road space between 7am and 6.30pm from Monday to Friday.

Ken Livingstone, London's mayor and the instigator of the congestion charge, warned it was going to be a "bloody day" for the capital. Many watched out of morbid fascination, as if expecting the streets to fill with burning cars and rioting motorists seeking retribution on authorities apparently hell-bent on bleeding them dry of cash. The expectations of others were less dramatic. They simply wanted to see if the congestion charge worked, and if it would be coming to a road near them.

Drivers carped but there were certainly no riots and now, like buses that turn up three at a time and overcrowded train carriages, the £5 fee has become just a daily irritant to many of the capital's commuters. For others it has led to a complete change in routine; for businesses, it has cost millions of pounds.

For Michael Goldfarb the congestion charge prompted probably the most expensive 14 seconds of his life. The journalist had timed his journey to perfection, entering London's central zone at 6.30pm on the dot and thereby avoiding the charge - or so he thought. But while his VW Golf's clock said it was 6.30pm, the atomic clock at Rugby didn't agree. Employed by the cameras that take pictures of vehicles entering and driving within the central zone's eight square miles, Rugby's clock showed that he entered at 18.29 and 46 seconds. As Michael thought he was outside the charging times, he didn't bother paying. That'll be an £80 fine, thank you very much.

Others have also been tripped up by a payment system that critics say is quirky and designed to catch drivers out. Mike Wiltshire from Bristol came to London for a long weekend. Aware that he had to pay the congestion charge for the Friday and Monday he spent in the capital, he was shocked to discover that he couldn't pay both together on the Monday. That's another £80 fine, discounted to £40 for prompt payment.

Paul Watters, head of roads and transport at the AA, believes examples such as these have done the system no favours: "We are concerned that there isn't more information for people coming from out of town. And if Transport for London (TfL) is going to be so rigorous about its timings it should have lights on the border of the zone to tell people when it's in operation."

TfL is unsympathetic. "Drivers have a duty to find out how the system operates and to obey its rules," a spokesman said. However, the AA argues that it suits TfL to have a degree of woolliness about the rules. When the motoring organisation surveyed drivers who regularly travelled into London, 57 per cent said they were put off driving into the capital by the difficulty of paying the charge, while the £5 itself deterred only 45 per cent.

The congestion charge has also failed to raise the money Livingstone promised to bolster London's creaking transport system. The start-up and operating costs are estimated at £361 million, but when TfL finally releases figures for the congestion charge's first year, it will show that rather than the anticipated £200m (revised down to £120m by the time the scheme was launched), the charge will have accrued only £68m. The figure is apparently so low because the original £5 calculation was made without taking into account special discounts and exemptions for residents and workers in the zone. But of more concern is that £50m of the revenue raised is expected to be from fines. "That says there is something wrong with the system," said Watters. "Penalties shouldn't be a revenue stream. That just shows desperation. They don't want people to comply, which is terrifying." Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, added: "People who have incurred penalties wrongly have had to work too hard to prove their innocence. But the way Capita, which administers the system, is paid means it's not in its interest to be lenient or flexible."

And that isn't the only area of concern. Of the 35,000-40,000 penalties issued each week, TfL estimates that it drops about 60 per cent when drivers appeal. Of those that aren't discarded, between one and two per cent go to independent arbitration, which finds in favour of the motorist in 50 per cent of cases. That's more than half a million motorists who have had to waste time proving their innocence. Meanwhile, more than 20 per cent of fines are being ignored altogether.

As if aggrieved car drivers weren't enough of a bureaucrat's bad dream, the system for dishing out penalties is highly labour-intensive. Although cameras using automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR) software photograph cars in the zone and computers match these to a database of drivers who have paid the charge, the snaps of cars that are identified as non-payers have to be checked manually. And still a 51-year-old farmer from Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire received a penalty because his 8mph combine harvester had allegedly been caught in the zone. A system this unwieldy, as well as a call centre to answer questions and protests, not to mention camera maintenance, will have cost TfL between £90m and £100m for the year.

Then there's the cost to business. The John Lewis Partnership, whose flagship store on Oxford Street is within the zone, has been particularly outspoken. And it's easy to see why: turnover in that one shop is down by between 12 and 15 per cent. Communications director Paul Burden said: "We can make comparisons with other stores and see Oxford Street is lagging. In the current economic climate, two or three per cent can be a pretty important contribution to profit."

If business has borne the brunt of the cost, there's no doubt that individuals have been in the front line when it comes to having their lives changed. The number of cars entering the zone has gone down by 38 per cent. But despite this remarkable figure, the charge has only hit its target of a 15 per cent vehicle reduction.

The explanation for this apparent contradiction lies in the deterrent effect of the charge to individuals. There are one million more bus journeys a day than before the charge, cycling is up by 30 per cent, motorcycling is up by 20 per cent and taxi trips have increased by 20 per cent. This is countered by an unaffected number of lorries and vans delivering goods and more journeys by drivers who live within the zone and pay a heavily discounted charge.

This is reflected in the business world too, where larger operations that rely on vehicles to go about their daily business haven't been hit as badly as small companies. Pimlico Plumbers is a case in point. Based at Waterloo, it is well inside the central zone and has benefited greatly from the congestion charge. Owner Charles Mullins explained: "We're picking up a lot of work from one-man bands who are less inclined to come into the zone. For smaller outfits the administration makes coming into the zone a real headache."

Pimlico Plumbers has also benefited from the charge's success in reducing traffic volume. "There's less congestion so our engineers can get around quicker. We spend about £2,500 a week on the charge [businesses pay £5·50 per vehicle per day] but we make more than that back because on average an engineer has time to fit another job into his working day," Mullins said.

So, love it or hate it, the charge has at least done what it set out to do and reduced traffic within the central zone, although the early average speed increase of 3mph has now dwindled to 2mph as road and traffic engineering works have made a comeback; nearly eight miles of new bus lanes have been installed in the past 12 months, for example. Three quarters of delivery firms say their journey times are no better now than they were a year ago.

And outside the zone? Doom mongers were predicting hordes of motorists clogging up roads on the zone's perimeter waiting for the clock to tick past 6.30pm. That hasn't happened, just as in residential areas such as Kennington, bisected by the zone's south-eastern boundary, property prices appear to have been unaffected. However, according to the road-monitoring service Trafficmaster, journey times outside the zone increased as drivers who formerly passed through or into the zone found alternative routes.

Apart from the system's bureaucracy, there are still some glitches. Bus management has been poor, as King observes: "Now we have gridlocks caused by too many buses. And there are still problems with some traffic lights inside the zone - but the people affected have paid good money to be on London's roads."

There are more clouds on the horizon. TfL's next project is to extend the zone westward to take in more of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. This would add about 100,000 motorists to the 40,000 already inside the zone; to make the economics of the system work, the 90 per cent residents' discount might have to be abandoned.

About 700 local residents turned up at a public meeting this week to voice their opposition, but they aren't the only ones anxiously awaiting consultation over the extension. Paul Burden, who also acts as a spokesman on behalf of the Oxford Street Association, said: "We know restaurants and theatres are worried. We don't think there is a single retailer who doesn't have some concerns." Even the pro-toll Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors found that 90 per cent of central London retailers and 75 per cent of leisure businesses believed the charge had reduced custom, and suggested that there had been a fall in commercial rents.

If you get the impression there's been quite a lot of "suck it and see" surrounding congestion charging, you're right. Of course TfL experts spent hours poring over their projections but there were some things that were impossible to predict: the high cost of running the system and the number of discounted charges that would be given, to name two vital ones. And both have had an effect on the disappointing figures. "If you were to do a cost-benefit analysis of the whole scheme, we believe it would be marginal," said Paul Watters.

The Road Users' Alliance has warned other local authorities to think carefully before introducing similar schemes. RUA director Tim Green said: "London has always been much less dependent on the car to deliver its customers and workforce than other conurbations, which are therefore at higher risk."

But some cities seem undeterred. Edinburgh is forging ahead with a scheme that will roll out in 2006. Unlike London's method, drivers will be charged £2 for crossing a cordon around the city's central zone. Also unlike London, it hopes to benefit from the capital's experience and avoid the cumbersome backroom bureaucracy. But despite the dissimilarities it does rely on London as an example. The executive member for transport from the City of Edinburgh Council, Andrew Burns, said: "If London had failed dismally there's very little chance we would have followed, and I think it's the same for other cities such as Leeds and Bristol which are considering charging drivers."

So because it's achieved its primary purpose of reducing traffic in a central zone, there's every chance that congestion charging could be coming to a city near you soon. But is it just charging for the sake of it? Several experts we spoke to suggested that TfL could have achieved its 15 per cent traffic reduction target by some judicious road narrowing, further manipulation of the traffic light phasing and one way systems, not dissimilar to the "ring of steel" implemented in the City of London after the 1993 terrorist bomb in Bishopsgate.

But if you're a car hater like Ken Livingstone and you're going to make yourself unpopular with drivers, you might as well go the whole hog. And if it's proved one thing, congestion charging has shown the power of the humble fiver.

(posted 7341 days ago)

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