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London’s congestion charging scheme has met with inevitable local opposition. Paul Gosling takes an indepth look at how this key transport issue will work, how it will affect local authorities, and explores similar traffic management schemes across the UK and further afield.

London’s congestion charging scheme, which (at the time of writing) was scheduled to begin on Monday 17 February, is the latest attempt by a major city to limit traffic in its commercial hub – but it is not the first and barring a major disaster in London’s implementation, it will not be the last.

Mayor Ken Livingstone is adamant that congestion charging is essential for the capital. “The single biggest problem for London and Londoners is the gridlock of our transport system,” he says. “At the start of the 21st century, traffic is crawling around central London at an average speed of less than 10 miles an hour. Congestion damages the environment, business competitiveness and everyone’s quality of life. As Mayor, tackling the transport crisis facing our city is my top priority. The only way to ease traffic congestion is to encourage motorists to switch from their cars to public transport.”

Livingstone’s scheme is predicted to cut traffic levels inside the charging zone by 10-15% and congestion delays by 20-30%. Success is dependent, in part, on public transport taking the strain. Transport for London (TfL) – the Mayor’s transport management arm – says that increased passenger numbers on the Underground will be small as a proportion of existing traffic, so will not cause major problems. An extra 200 buses, capable of taking more than 10,000 additional passengers, will travel at peak times and this, it is hoped, will take much of the increased demand.

Drivers still entering the eight square mile key area of the City of London, Waterloo, Mayfair, Soho, Bloomsbury and Holborn during weekday working hours will pay £5 a day. Payment is via passes which can be bought in shops, by phone, or over the Internet. The income should raise at least £130m annually, all to be spent on transport improvements in London. In the first year some £84m is going on improving bus services, with local road management schemes another priority.

However, TfL argues that in the longer term the impact of congestion charging income could be lost. It claims that the Treasury has underestimated the cost of the Tube PPP contracts and this is likely to force most of the income from the charges to be diverted to paying for Tube management.

Cost of Implementation
Initial costs of implementing congestion charging are £200m, including £100m on related traffic management measures spreading out much wider than the charging zone. But the charges should cut much of the £100m annual cost which TfL says London businesses suffer from road congestion in the capital.

While the scheme has attracted many opponents among the drivers affected, the technology is as controversial as the idea itself. In a survey of engineers conducted by Professional Engineering magazine, some 43% believed that the scheme will fail because the technology is not up to it.

Enforcement is based on number plate recognition by cameras, cross referenced manually against the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s database of vehicle ownership. The scheme will need to be robust to cope with 40,000 vehicles an hour at peak time driving into the charging zone, a total of a quarter of a million vehicles a day. Anyone found to be using their vehicle without buying a permit or holding an exemption will be levied a fine of £80 – or £40 if paid within two weeks, rising to £120 if paid late.

Who is Managing the Scheme?
The company implementing the system is Capita, which holds many outsource contracts with local authorities but was heavily criticised for its management of a major IT project for the Home Office to vet the criminal records of teachers and other child-care professionals. Capita is confident its congestion charging system will work and expects the success of the scheme to generate sales of the technology to many other cities in the UK and abroad. A spokesman said there had been no problems in its tests and the only real issue was whether they could cope with the volume of work.

Not everyone will have to pay the full charge. There are 136,000 residents living within the charging zone, about half with a car, who are eligible for a 90% discount. Residents can park all day in a residents’ parking bay within the zone without paying any charge, provided they have a parking permit. Vehicles using low emission fuels – such as electricity, fuel cell and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) – have total exemptions. This is encouraging some fleet managers to convert all their vehicles and has caused speculation that this exemption could be lost.

A spokesman for TfL says there are no plans to review the exemptions, but the way they work will be monitored. “If everybody starts converting their vehicles to alternative fuels then we won’t cut down congestion,” he admits, conceding that there is no certainty that exemptions will remain indefinitely. Motor bikes, scooters, taxis, and any vehicle carrying a disabled person are exempted also.

Enforcement of the exemption for disabled people could be difficult. But again TfL is bullish, saying it does “believe” the system can work. It will conduct random checks on cars carrying disabled badges, with people found to be wrongly avoiding the charges losing their exemptions and prosecuted for fraud.

Royal Mail is pressing for its staff delivering and collecting mail to also be exempted. Here TfL says it is sympathetic, but that for this to be approved Royal Mail must first obtain clearance from the European Commission that this would not be regarded as illegal state aid.

Others will have to pay the charge in full, including government ministers, civil servants, staff at TfL and members of the London Assembly. So, too, will diplomats and employees at embassies and consulates – which has caused some complaints from foreign governments. Parents will not be exempted for taking their children to school: they are actually one of the Mayor’s key targets to cut traffic levels. Actress Samantha Bond has – unsuccessfully – lobbied for theatre staff in the West End to be exempted on the grounds that when they finish work it will be so late that it is dangerous to use public transport. A legal challenge by Ms Bond and others on the grounds of an alleged breach of human rights is still being considered.

Westminster a Strong Critic
Westminster City Council is another strong critic, which failed in its own legal bid to prevent the charges. It admits that it has found it impossible to quantify the financial impact on its operations. “We simply don’t know,” said its spokesman. “There are too many unknowns around congestion charging.” The borough takes £90m revenues a year from parking fees, much more than any other London borough.

While it might be assumed that Westminster will lose revenues from reduced parking within the zone, it can be expected to increase income from its car parks just outside the zone. “But given that people pay £4 an hour parking charges in Westminster, will they really be put off by £5 a day congestion charges?,” asks Westminster’s spokesman.

This raises an issue which will also have to be kept under review – whether the charges are adequate to act as an effective deterrent. This is especially true as an Underground all day Travelcard for zones 1 and 2 costs £5.10. Perhaps not totally seriously, motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson has suggested the level needs to be pitched at £50 a day to hit the City financiers in a way that influences behaviour. The London Cycling Campaign is certainly serious when it proposes raising the charge to £10.

Views Across Britain
The view across Britain is mixed as to whether London offers a useful model for learning lessons. “We are different from London,” says Anne McMunn, director of Countrywide Porter Novelli, which is working with Transport Initiative Edinburgh to introduce an ambitious traffic management scheme in the city in 2006 or later. “Congestion will probably treble over the next 18 years. Edinburgh has looked at how to tackle that congestion. Congestion charging alone will not work. It has to be a mix, with road transport and public transport improvements as well. But we will be very interested in learning from how it works in London. We are looking at a similar system.”

Other cities examining traffic management are less focused on London. Leeds City Council says there is no possibility of it introducing any form of congestion charging before its super tram is fully functioning in 2007. “We are not particularly watching what is happening in London,” said its spokesman. “Local authorities will take decisions on the basis of local situations. It is just a smug metropolitan assumption that everyone is watching London.”

Nottingham City Council has another reason not to be obsessed by the London experience. It plans to be the first local authority in England to introduce workplace car parking charges in 2005, with employers paying £150 per space per year – though companies can recharge their staff. This scheme, too, is aimed at reducing peak time congestion by shifting commuter traffic onto public transport and is expected to raise £10m annually. The income will be ring-fenced for transport improvements and should be much simpler to manage than congestion charging.

“London is relevant,” admits Nottingham Council spokesman, Stephan Richeux, “in that it raises the profile of charging and will help or hinder the public perception. In terms of the detail it is not relevant. We won’t be deflected either way.”

Bristol is another which says it will watch the capital’s experience closely, while recognising the differences. Councillor Helen Holland, Bristol City Council’s Deputy Leader with responsibility for transport, says: “From the studies that we have done, we can see that cities will not be able to significantly reduce traffic growth without some kind of restraint. It is predicted that car traffic alone will grow by more than a third over the next 20 years. Congestion charging is part of that restraint and Bristol has been researching the implications of introducing a system along with other UK cities and partners across Europe. We are working closely with other cities such as Rome – which have already successfully introduced congestion charging – to ensure that we are aware of the progression in technology.” But she adds: “We will not introduce congestion charging until high quality public transport alternatives are in place.”

Durham, meanwhile, has become famous for already introducing a toll of £2 per car to access the historic area by the cathedral and castle. The result is a cut in vehicle numbers from 2,000 a day to just 200 and much freer and safer pedestrian movement in a key area for tourists.

Around the World
Actual experience from elsewhere in the world demonstrates that it is possible to introduce congestion charging without major difficulties. Probably the most successful application has been in the city-island state of Singapore, which has used road pricing since 1975 and introduced electronic road pricing (ERP) in 1998. While the charging area is much smaller than London’s, the scheme’s administrators say it has reduced congestion, pollution and traffic, with a big reduction in solitary car use and an increase in car sharing.

Television producer and director Roger Bean made a programme on Singapore’s scheme, broadcast last year. He says: “It works well for Singapore, but Singapore isn’t London. It’s a system they spent over 10 years putting together, unlike the system here [in London] which has been put together at breakneck speed.”

Singapore’s ERP is significantly different from London’s system. Drivers buy a cash card from a retail outlet to pay for their road charges, which are deducted from the card as vehicles pass electronic charging points. Different roads have different charges and these vary according to time of day. There is universal acceptance and adoption of the system in Singapore, but given the lack of democracy in the small state this is hardly surprising.

More significant is the experience in the Norwegian cities of Trondheim, Oslo and Bergen. A toll ring has encircled the old royal city of Trondheim since 1991, with charges levied for entering the centre on weekdays between the hours of 06:00-18:00. Prices rise in peak hours and lorries pay double. All income has been ring-fenced for transport improvements. Peak hour traffic has fallen by 10%. Initially the Trondheim public were opposed to the scheme, with 72% against. This fell to 48% opposed two months after the scheme went live, and opposition was down to just 36% after five years.

Mayor Livingstone will hope that public opinion shifts just as heavily in London. But for that to happen he must also hope that his decisions on which technology to use and the level of charges confound his many critics.

Paul Gosling – a freelance journalist who specialises in public services

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