Congestion Charges Arrive

I received the dreaded letter in the post this morning and though I expected it, I was faced with another harsh economic reality that will soon be draining funds from my bank account. The congestion charge is coming.

I knew it was going to happen; the City of London has made a killing charging those who enter the city centre between the hours of 7am and 6:30pm - to the tune of £93m in 2004/2005. All those "No C in K&C" bumper stickers did little to slow its advancement.

When the congestion charge was introduced in February 2003, the charging zone encompassed the City of London (the financial district) and the primary commercial and entertainment centre, the West End. It cost £5.

Though revenue was meant to be put towards making improvements to London transport – including providing more buses and routes, and better facilities for cyclists and pedestrians – the £200m initial cost of setting up the scheme and numerous Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras seem to be sucking up a lot of it as well. A lot of infrastructure had to be modified to watch the boundaries and ensure fees were paid, and as a side benefit it allows police to track every vehicle within the limits. It makes the old Soviet Union method of crude roadblocks and entry and exit passes look pre-historic.

But Mayor Ken Livingstone is so pleased with the income generation and traffic relief presumably caused by the charge, that in July 2005 he decided to raise the fee from £5 to £8, and devised a plan to include Kensington and Chelsea within the charging zone. So now the zone is scheduled to extend further to the West on February 19th, including Bayswater, Notting Hill, North and South Kensington, High Street Kensington, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Belgravia and Pimlico. The hours of operation will also be reduced by 30 minutes, running from 7am to 6pm.

When you take into account that the city’s routes are already built and maintained using taxes paid by those living in the area, it seems Mr. Livingstone has mastered the art of "ripping you off". But London is not the first city to impose a charging system for motorists. That title goes to Singapore, who inaugurated the Area Licensing Scheme (ALS) in June 1975.

By 1998, the ALS was replaced with an Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system which required all motor vehicles on the island to be fitted with "smart" debit cards containing microchips. Entering the ‘restricted zone’ activates sensors in road to emit a microwave beam and deduct a set amount from the debit card.

The ERP tolls vary according to the number of entries, the amount of time spent within the restricted zone, and the distance travelled. Fees can also be set according to the anticipated level of congestion, with the highest tolls imposed during the peak periods of 8:00-9:30am and 4:30-6:00pm, with prices declining with traffic density.

So perhaps it’s not that bad. With congestion charging systems already in place in Oslo, Stockholm, Bergen, Trondheim and many on their way to other UK cities, the road charging system will simply be a means of further extracting money in the name of traffic relief. And everyone who uses their car will be forced to pay. And pay. And pay some more.