Congestion Charges

HEADRAT

HEADRAT

HEADRAT

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
21,514
Location
Cambridge, UK
Just watching a report on the BBC about congestion charging, saying "people will be charged more for when they choose to travel"!

I'm sorry but this really get my goat, most people don't "choose" to travel at a certain time, their employer dictates their working hours and for most that is 09:00 to 17:30 :mad:

Obviously they will hit the motorist as they are an easy target, just another TAX for going to do a honest days work. Many many people "got on their bike" and found a job miles away from home to make sure they could provide for their family, now they are to be rewarded for their hard work!!

HEADRAT
 
Last edited:
Has congestion eased off much since the introduction of congestion charging, and also how do we find out where the money from charging is being invested?
 
So they say that they will reduce Tax on fuel and maybe do away with Road Tax, hardly any of the money currently gathered by tax on motorist is spent on the roads.

HEADRAT
 
splitz said:
Has congestion eased off much since the introduction of congestion charging, and also how do we find out where the money from charging is being invested?
Click to expand...
Of course it hasn't.
 
the money from the scheme is invested in ideas to make the congestion scheme better. currently the only way to make it better is to extend it (coverage) and put the charge up.

good use of the money!
 
I pay £1320 a year to drive in London, thats before I pay road tax, insurance and petrol tax not to mention car parking at £4 an hour

utter joke :S
 
Nozzer said:
Of course it hasn't.
Click to expand...
Economics says other wise (as do I imagin stats do). Whats the point in having roads that are too full to use. Tax people that use them to cut the numbers then the people that can afford it will be able to use it. If you cant afford it then there are other options for you to use.
 
At the moment CC apparently still runs at loss. Yes, money flow is there, yes virtually the scheme should pay for itself but the targets aren't met and the company running the technical side of the scheme - Capita - drains most of the money. If I remember articles correctly in 2005 it surfaced that because Capita kept missing 20% out of 39 key performance indicators (effectively because congestion was still there), they were regularly fined to the tune of £7,500 for every day CC was running, that's pre-interest. Those fines, were paid to Transport For London, however, Capita then filed complaint that because they had to pay those extra fines they weren't benefiting enough from the contract, (apparently there was a minimum sum of money they were supposed to pocket every year) and so Ken paid their fine, and 31 million pounds extra and hiked the charge to £8 and decided to roll out western extension, despite being defeated in surveys and referendum, just to keep money flow profitable enough for the operators. TFL produce statistics and virtual numbers every year but because the whole CC business is unregulated and effectively kept between Transport For London and its contractors no one really knows exactly how much, if any, money is left in budget every year.
 
People are willing to drive further and more often than they've ever done in the past. There's more and more traffic on the road every year. How do you suggest they reduce congestion?
 
Guigsy said:
People are willing to drive further and more often than they've ever done in the past. There's more and more traffic on the road every year. How do you suggest they reduce congestion?
Click to expand...

Perhaps by creating a viable alternative by investing heavily in public transport. The whole, lets tax people and spend the the money on improvements to public transport, is the wrong approach and clearly not happening anyway. We should be incentivised to use public transport, not disincentivised to use private transport.

If there was a viable and reasonably priced alternative i'm sure many more people (speaking of London particularly would use publis transport.

More of the carrot and less of the stick! Seems to be the the way the country is going though.
 
If you don't work then you don't need to pay this...

Is it me or are the government actually making it almost impossible to work now..
 
It's not the goverment so much as Red Ken. Quite why he was put in as Major I have no idea; perhaps he didn't explain his grand idea of congestion charging.

I'm sure at least 75% of londoners wouldn't think twice about giving him a smack round the head if he ever lowered himself in to coming onto public transport.
 
John_V85 said:
It's not the goverment so much as Red Ken. Quite why he was put in as Major I have no idea; perhaps he didn't explain his grand idea of congestion charging.
Click to expand...
In early eighties Ken became a chief of Great London Council and as chief he introduced something called "Fares Fair" - basically made all London councils pay for transport deficits while people traveling on buses and tubes only had to pay fraction of the actuall cost - the sum deemed "fair" was, I think £1 for tubes and £0.50 for buses regardless of distance. It was massively popular and usage of public transport rose almost over night, however the whole policy was soon questioned and taken to courts by councils like Bromley, which felt they shouldn't sponsor London Underground if they don't even have tube station within its boundries. And so in December 1981 the "Fares Fair" was outlawed by the Law Lords.

When he stood to mayoral elections in ninenties with "I will improve public transport and cut down road traffic" motto, everyone thought he just found another way to make public transport fares fair again. Instead, as we all know, he just made everyone's life expensive misery.

As for re-elections, it is highly questionable, because efectively only about 1 in 10 Londoners voted for him but thanks to bizarre instant runoff secondary votes system he was re-elected Mayor regardless.
 
Imo the government is trying to find ways to stop people making unnecessary trips etc to try and cut down on the of oil, over the coming years i can see some odd laws coming into place to try and "cut" car use. But behind it all, its simply trying to cut down on the use of oil.

O and they saying lowing tax on petrol etc will help it wont, they will be charging that much it will end up costing us more in the long run.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom