Congestion in London can be grim – even with the Congestion Charging Zone. At this time of year, a fortnight of bliss, getting around town by bike or car with near empty roads is a cinch. But normally our roads are bulging with people travelling generating enough air pollution to kill 4,000 Londoners every year. The plans for London to grow by a million people will only make this beyond worse – calculated to be 20% worse. With precious few plans to increase public transport enough what should be done?
A study about road pricing of the capitals roads has just been produced which states “It is our view that a London-wide road pricing scheme is essential and without it congestion will worsen, air pollution will worsen” it also states “the health of Londoners will suffer, CO2 reduction targets will be missed”. Heady stuff. The study and its review has impeccable academic credentials Professors Whitelegg, Goodwin and Nash.
They suggest a fee of 20p per km (roughly 30p/mile) would cut 10% of car trips while raising £1.2bn gross a year from the remaining 90% of car trips. These sums are enough for a new tube line to be built biannually. Very appealing. They also calculate other benefits such as bus costs coming down by around 11% from less congestion – reducing bus fares by 11% would really help the poorest Londoners.
The appeal is accentuated by their statements that “International evidence is very clear that when car parking places of traffic levels are reduced the local economy thrives and grows in number of people employed and turnover. This is because large numbers of people are shopping locally and have a greater amount of disposable income available for local goods and services because they have reduced spending on vehicles”. I know my family would use its car far less with road pricing – we’d ration it for important trips – staying more locally to spend our money.
At the same time that the case for road pricing seems like a potential solution popular feeling, as reported in the 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey, shows that only 18% agreed people should pay more to drive on roads at the busiest times.
So for road pricing to happen would take a braver politician with a big sell.
For Southwark only half our households own a car and under half the traffic on our roads starts or ends it journey in Southwark. So we probably have the most to gain from road pricing. We also suffer more from air pollution killing residents with roads like the Old Kent Road. But I’ll not hold my breath that road pricing happens soon.
You live in a reality of your own. The congestion charge is already killing London – especially as it’s combined with laughably (and deliberately) bad public transport. The bad public transport has nothing to do with funding (before you say so). It’s the result of a quite poisonous mix of spite and incompetence.
For those of us who live outside, seeing resources being diverted into services like theatres and museums in London and then being forced to stay away, by a transport policy designed to make us stay away, is especially offensive.
It’s possible to drive into other large cities, but they haven’t been run as badly as London.
So what is your solution Chris?
London Undergrounds and Network Rail appear from reports to be grossly inefficient compared to other European organisations. But even when they’re fixed our roads are congested and with another 1 million people ‘planned’ for London will get more congested.
I don’t know who you think is planning an extra million people for London – it’s shrinking. London Underground and Network Rail have never been fixed at any point in history.
How about getting rid of the measures to create congestion (unworkable one way systems, all the traffic lights that were retimed before the charge came in to gum everything up)? Then get rid of the problem of people driving round for hours looking for somewhere to park – a couple of city centre multi storey car parks would do well – except London preferred to spend the money on a festival of running round in circles.
Or you could make sure only the wealthy can afford to go there. I don’t think a city that does that deserves to be a capital.
London doesn’t work. It has long ceased to be a world class city.
You do have a wierd perspective on things James.
You claim the solution to congested roads is to increase the price thereby raising the cost of an already heavily taxed transport solution. But your answer to untaxed and overcrowded public transport is to reduce prices by subsidising it from taxes on those who do not or cannot use it.
You claim that reduced parking provision and raised charges results in a thriving local economy. Try telling that to the thousands of towns who folowed this flawed policy and now see their centres dieing with so many empty shops and failed businesses. Try telling that to the families who’s lives have been devastated following a business failure brought about by mindless councils who think making it more difficult to park will bring increased business.
You hit the nail on the head with your reply to Chris. We simply cannot go on increasing a population with the limited resources available. 1,000,000 more people in London alone is a disaster, the millions more across the UK are destroying the country and consuming the resources needed for future generations.
That is the elephant in the room and fiddling about with failed policies on transport will do nothing to address the real problems facing our childrens generation.
Hi Chris,
Take a look at: http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/demographics/gla-popproj-2010-round-shlaa-clg08-sya-borough.xls
It shows predictions of an increase from 2001 to 2031 of 1.5M people.