Slashdot Mirror
London to Introduce Traffic Congestion Charge
Vivek writes "BBC is reporting that Londoners will have to pay a 5 pound "Congestion Charge" starting Feb 17. According to this Times of India article, an Indian software firm called Mastek developed the .NET based software to implement the plan. In the absence of toll booths, it reportedly uses character recognition from 700 surveillance cameras to identify defaulting license plates." See our previous story for background.
I thought the tubes (subway) were already over crowded in London? Shouldn't they increase the capacity of public transit before they force people to use it?
UNIX/Linux Consulting
This is true, but the plans, adverts and cameras have been in place for about 6 months by now...
Another exclusive scoop by Slashdot?
Hmm.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Why in the world don't they just make the roads bigger? Doesn't that seem to be the logical route, rather than rely on high technology?
Too damned expensive to take all that real estate by eminent domain, would increase parking requirements requiring even more real estate to be taken, some of it isn't houses, it's office towers, and even then it wouldn't solve the air quality issue. Singapore has AFAIK been doing pretty much the same thing for a while.
As someone here on Slashdot eloquently said, building bigger roads to deal with a traffic problem is like using a bigger belt to deal with a weight problem.
The charge will encourage people to use public transportation.
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
By far the scariest aspect (curiously un-mentioned by the Mayor) is that these cameras will be hooked up to facial recognition software.
In theory, just those covering a small section of London (the financial district) - but I have no doubts this will be extended to cover the whole city in time (after all, it's touted as "automatically identifying suspects or known criminals" so what government in the world would turn down the chance).
I find this far more disturbing - paying to try and alleviate congestion is fine (London is very crowded, and a similar scheme did help alleviate the traffic problems in Singapore when congestion charges were introduced there), paying for the privilege of being treated as a potential criminal is more than a little scary...
Disregarding the various arguments for and against the "congestion zone" and its implementation for the purposes of decreasing traffic... there's an interesting alternate purpose, apparently. This weekend's Observer describes the dual-use, not only to reduce congestion but also apparently to "protect the city from terrorist attack". Seems to me such a system generates way too much information to be able to "protect" in anything close to real-time.
There's a *known* failure in the system whereby it can't recogise special font plates (only in the process of being made illegal), small motorcycle number plates (even though they're included in the scheme) and it's more than likely that mud, or salt, or cunningly placed black bolts, can make the system mis-fire and log a different number plate to the one you're carrying. There's no real system for ambiguous plates to be checked by hand.
Add in a real problem in the UK with second hand cars still being registered to their previous owners (the new owner is responsible for re-registration, and many don't because it means parking and speeding fines don't reach them) and you have One Hell of a Problem.
I expect civil disobedience.
The technology may be ever so good (though I somehow doubt even that) but it'll be the human element that'll scupper it...
Wouldn't it be much more effective, and much easier to tax central-london parking lots/spaces?
Admittedly it's a low-tech solution. Am I missing something here?
I know that would keep ME out (I already take the commuter train and two metros to get to work, because parking is just TOO expensive for me (in Montreal -- not London)).
S
NEED!? What the hell is "need" anyway? You need to get to your job? Maybe what you "need" is a job closer to home?
"Need" gets to be very, sticky, sticky issue subject to political interpretaion.
And of course the shopping areas *need* needless costomers, or their "needed" employees have no "need" to be there in the first place.
Of course what you really have on the road is a *right* of way.
On your mule I guess, because the only ones who could cogently state a viable reason for the *need* to have motor vehicles in the city are police and emergency services in the first place. So the logical thing to do would be to simply close the city to all nonofficial motor traffic.
Works for me, I'm bicycle mechanic and frame builder. I could use the business, and you could use the exercise.
KFG
That system seems a bit clumsy. It sounds fairly expensive, too.
Not really. Most of the cameras were already in place for traffic-flow monitoring, all it required was a few more to patch up the gaps in coverage and some new software to interpret the images. A smart card system would have required every driver - even those who only drove into London once in ten years - to buy an expensive smart card reader/transmitter. Maybe you can get away with that in Singapore, but forking out money so that you get charged for the privilege? Not in London.
OK so the London government could buy the smartcard reader/transponders but then you're spending far far more on infrastructure than you are on a few hundred cameras, plus you have to work out a way to distribute them. Also it would have been susceptible to tampering - look at the dismal failure that most satellite TV smart card systems are. You could easily have a PC sitting in your car pretending to be a smartcard but failing to deduct any money. Also how do you enforce a smart card system? What happens when a car enters the charging zone without a smart card? You can't have barriers to stop these cars, the whole point of the system is to improve traffic flow, not slow it down, same reason you can't have toll booths. Only way is to have... enforcement cameras everywhere. Real cost saving eh?
Your choice: enforcement cameras plus some relatively cheap software, all centrally controlled and essentially tamper-proof... or enforcement cameras plus several million expensive hardware smartcards and transponders, only limited central control, and prone to tampering.
Smart card/transponder systems work on public transport because there are barriers in the way to stop you if you don't have one or it's run out of money - as a matter of fact London is getting just such a system this year. But for a road system they're simply the wrong technology.