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For the third day, Londoners are coming to terms with two words: Congestion Charge. If you want to drive into a big chunk of central London you are now required to pay a £5 a day entry tax (just over $8 at today’s exchange rate). It is enforced via your licence plate by means of linked cameras and computers, and a series of escalating fines that peak with having your car taken away. It is the brainchild of the mayor, Ken Livingstone, who makes a hobby of keeping newts and has been reported as saying that he hates cars and if he had the power would ban the lot. I believe a similar scheme operates in Singapore and one or two other places, but this is the most ambitious to date.

Fortunately I don’t usually have to drive through the affected zone, but the word is that the scheme will be extended if it is seen to “work”. Not sure what the criteria are here. Of course, a high proportion of the money raised goes on administering the scheme and no doubt it provides employment for many new bureaucrats, which can only be good.



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CBC Newsworld had a little summary of where other measures have been considered and implemented, if you're interested, dxb:

http://cbc.ca/news/features/gridlock_030217.html


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a similar scheme operates in Singapore

I believe, it is called 'Zoning'. A draconian version of HOV; everyone who uses these roads at certain stipulated times, has to pay regardless of vehicular occupancy. I am told that it has dramatically eased traffic snarls and has encouraged car pooling too. But then, Singapore is SO regimented, I don't see how any governemental regulation effected there, can't be a success!


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Thanks for the interesting link, Bean. Two points from it:

Traffic reduction 25%. Yes, but the first day coincided with the first day of half-term which accounts for at least 15% of that 25%.

Use public transport instead. Yes, fine idea, but our public transport systems are already stretched beyond breaking point. They actually do keep breaking, not just breaking down. The Central Line has been closed for a couple of weeks due to a derailment caused when a motor fell off one unit and on investigation it was found that the bolts and brackets on all units needed to be replaced. Thats 12000 bolts and associated brackets. The derailed train ran onto another line resulting in that also being closed. It reopened today.

Time will tell, but public transport has had little or no investment under successive governments and we are now paying the price for that failure to bite the bullet. Elected governments tend to have a five year horizon I'm afraid.


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Elected governments tend to have a five year horizon I'm afraid.

Well, I suppose you could always stage a coup and rule as a totalitarian dictator for the next thirty years. That should be about enough time to "fix everything"!


#96270 02/20/03 02:37 AM
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Bean the last person who got credit for making the trains run on time by virtue of being a dictator was Mussolini. Look how he ended up. And of course, the trains went back to their old ways.


#96271 02/20/03 11:04 AM
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the trains went back to their old ways.

Something about the way that was phrased gave me mental images of trains with personalities a la Thomas the Tank Engine, saying to each other "Whew! Thank God we're done with that! Now I can sleep in again." Y'know, with little faces on the locomotives and everything!


#96272 02/22/03 08:02 AM
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Yeah, Bean, but firing the fat controller in Italy meant hanging him and his mistress by their heels from a lamppost. Something peculiarly Italian about that approach to labour relations, wouldn't you say? At least the English do it with gold watches and vapid rhetoric at a boozy party!

- Pfranz

#96273 02/22/03 01:02 PM
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Not exactly a lamppost, Pfranz. Even though dead at the hanging-by-heels--gruesome to consider.


#96274 02/22/03 03:27 PM
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gruesome - yes, but true. The photo ran in all the major newspapers of the day.
----------------------------------------------------------
Re the charge to use the inner London roads : what happens to the poor benighted tourist who drives there by accident?


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