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)
This just leads to more sprawl.
Actually, as a highly paid engineer god, I would support a minor usage fee for freeway access during rush hour to clear out some of the riffraff. :-) A few years back our local highway department ran a survey and found aout that almost half the people on the freeway in the afternoon rush really didn't *need* to be there.
--- Ban humanity.
Have you been to London? The city was in place years before the asphalt, years before the cars. In order to revamp the roads, they'd have to raze the homes of tens and tens of thousands of people. Unlikely.
It's kind of hard to make roads bigger in the middle of one of the world's nicer capital cities. The tourists (not to mention the locals) are likely to object to demolishing so many landmarks...
Umm.. maybe because of buildings?
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.
Bigger roads means: 1. More traffic 2. More greenhouse gases 3. More smog 4. More urban sprawl 5. More roads repeat Besides, have you seen Metro London? I don't believe there is more room for roads.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The idea of demolishing buildings to widen roads wouldn't work:
The area the system overs is only the central area of the City, and the buildings in question would either be company headquarters, protected buildings (of historical value etc) or just plain too big to completely remove.
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
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.
Since people won't be able to drive around the centre of London much less park there they will go and park immediately outside the Congestion Zone which will cause havoc. Fortunately some car parks have already taken note of this and are charging a daily rate of £4.60
Summation 2
London doesn't have the room to widen the roads. The road layout in the centre of London is in many places hundreds of years old. None of the US-Style grid system.
The cost of widening roads in central London would be astronomical - not to mention the fact that there are a lot of very old buildings that you can't just knock a bit off from.
I've been working with .NET and all I have to say it, it won't scale. With the amount of traffic it's going to have to handle, pure and simple it's not going to scale. Just because it works for a half dozen cars a minute, doesn't mean it will work for less than ideal situations or massive congestion.
I'll assume these are illegal in London, yes? If not, I plan on buying stock in any UK based company that makes these.
Because they'd have to knock down large parts of London to do it. In the centre it's one of the most densely packed cities I know of.
Besides, displacing people would be difficult. Displacing Harrods? Not a hope in hell - however much you pay them.
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
It's a small country. The UK has roughly 1/5 the population of the US, most of them in England, but a miniscule land area. We have built bigger roads, but then people just take the opportunity to live further and further away from work. There are 3 million more cars on the road since 1997 and average commuting distances have done something like treble over the last 20 years. We are already well over capacity as far as cars are concerned.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
For those not in the know, thats 5 pounds of money. Or, for the metrically inclined, its about 2.3 kilos of money. This roughly equates to a metric ass-load.
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?
This is central London; it's an old city, with really expensive real estate, stuffed full of heritage sites. We're only talking about an area of a few square miles.
I can't figure out if this is a troll, but as it's been marked Insightful....
We're talking central London. very Central London. This is all office blocks, shops, and clubhouses. Property here is really expensive, and real estate is at a premium. Widening the roads would either require rebuilding practically the whole of the area or removing pedestrian walkways. Neither is practical.
The point of the congestion charge is however to move traffic onto the public transport systems instead. Of which both the bus and tube networks are overcrowded anyway, especially the Tube. The Govn't claims the Tube isn't overcrowded, but the Underground regularly closes stations due to overcrowding and is jam-packed* for a very broad definition of 'Rush Hour'.
At the moment, of course, a couple of the arterial underground lines are closed due to a derailment that happened a couple of weeks ago. This has made it oh so much worse...
*Disclaimer: not as full as systems like the Tokyo tube, obviously, but London isn't nearly as dense and could be vastly improved.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
expect curry flavored tickets in the mail.
There was some cartoon, ages ago, where a girl always seemed to fix car problems with a can of hair spray. That cartoon was visionary.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Have you any idea how expensive property in London is? 1/2 millions dollars will only get you a modest 2 bedroom flat in a reasonable area. There is no upper limit on the price of flats in the centre. Trust me, this is not feasable on any scale.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
In order to revamp the roads, they'd have to raze the homes of tens and tens of thousands of people
Yes, but they would be able to relocate very quickly.
> Why in the world don't they just make the roads bigger?
Somehow that reminds me of the infamous Marie Antoinette quote "Let them eat cake". The whole problem is that there is *no* space left in london to make roads bigger and wider. As for sprawl, commuters already live as far as 1-2 hours train car/train journey away. I think anywhere short of tearing down the whole city and rebuilding it US style (and I have to say I much prefer the crowded London over the endless sprawl of LA) the only solution is to get people on public transport.
Charging a fee for a rare good (space on roads in this case) is something that should be very natural to capitatlists around the world, yet many countries such as the US or Germany (or Britain in fact) see the free use of roads as a divine right no-one should interfere with (while at the same time complaining about large governments and tax..).
You picked the wrong time to say that...:) I'm an Urban Planning student. Building more roads is actually worse for your transportation infrastructure because if a road is not congested, more people will use it, and if the road is widened, traffic usually gets WORSE within 1 year than better. (Eg a 10 minute trip with old roads now takes 13-15 minutes). I was recently in london, and there is NO PLACE to build a new road where it is needed most. Also, it is against certain zoning regulations to change the current roads. Also, emminent domain "fair market" is BS for the homeowner. They gov't will never give you as much as it's really worth, because you have no bargaining poisition. If you don't accept their offer, they'll just condemn your house, and you don't get anything! Fun! More roads is NOT the answer -- smart driving, use of public transit, and better services outside the city core would be a more effective way of eliminating congestion in the center than just building more roads, which means more pollution anyhow.
...my local Bentley's Luggage & Gifts will start carrying the Samsonite go-kart?
unsigned int question = 0x2B | ~(0x2B)
What is sad is that, while everyone agrees Something Must Be Done About Traffic, it is seen as a huge political gamble for Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, whom all the political parties hate (he was even kicked out of the Labour Party and stood as an independent candidate). He's got the nerve to at least try and sort out the problem, and whatever his politics, I admire him for that.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Like that'll stop people from linking to the previous article. I doubt half the people on /. even bother to read the whole story or click on the links before jumping to the comments.
Mod me up, proles!
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
>Why in the world don't they just make the roads bigger?
(I live in London and work in the city center, so I speak from first-hand experience.)
Because London is incredibly crowded and there is absolutely no place for them to put more roads without knocking down houses and buildings.
>Sure, I'm all for high tech, but we're talking about roads
>and traffic. People might be displaced, but they would
>get fair market for their houses, if the system is the same
>as it is here in the US.
And where would they get the money for paying people "fair market value" for their houses? This is London - my small two bedroom flat (in a semi-sleazy part of town) cost over 130,000 *pounds* (over $214,000 at the current exchange rate). Terraced houses easily cross 200,000 pounts in this area of town, and easily over 300,000 pounds in nicer areas. A terraced house is *maybe* 50 feet wide - tops - and is flush up against another terraced house on the other side. You do the math and figure out how much it will cost to put in a *single mile* of new road if you have to knock down a mile of terraced houses to do it. And that's *before* you factor in construction cost.
And don't forget, by the time you get near the city center, you're not talking about knocking down houses, but big, old 5-story stone and brick buildings worth millions of pounds
Since the Indian article makes no mention of any obfuscation-defeating technology being employed, what is to prevent people from smearing on the mud, and claiming to have hit a puddle if stopped by the bobbies?
By the time the road is complete there are populations shifts in anticipation of the road's completion. People move to neighborhoods that are now more desirable because better access is on its way. Buildings are renovated or new condos/apartments get put in. Areas that had been filled with people who used public transportation are now filled with folks who are affluent enough to have cars. By the time the new roads/lanes are carrying traffic they have too little capacity for the increased population.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
For those of you not too familiar with London, a map of central London with the congestion charging zone can be found here on the Transport for London website.
In brief, you're being charged 5 pounds per day inside to drive inside the congestion charging zone, which covers most of central London. The charge applies from 7.00am till 6.30pm Mondays to Fridays excluding Public Holidays (of which we get alot fewer than you 'merkins), the charge doesn't apply at weekends, and there exemptions and discounts available if you actually live within the zone or are disabled.
Considering how heavy the traffic in central London actually is, anything that might actually provide a bit of relief is welcome.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
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...
My last company was invited to work with the contractors for this. We'd done some work with the Criminal Records Bureau. The Congestion charging scheme was falling behind schedule and they were hoping for all the input they could muster.
.NET bit was some sort of high-up choice, probably to do with Microsoft's cosying up to "New" Labour to roll out Passport based e-government services [since rolled back in again].
The
The web operation is supposed to be a front end to everything, tbh the diagrams we were shown were a right spaghetti.
I can't remember what questions I asked but they were answered with blank stares and shrugs.
I'm glad they found some contractors. I really didn't want to do it [I'd danced with the Devil back in IIS4 days and have burnt toes].
The charging wont really help congestion on it's own. London is the worst place in the UK to drive round. 1mph is not much fun on a daily basis. Yet London has the best mass transport system in the UK but then again it doesn't have much competition.
The root cause of Uk traffic problems are the insistence that the rail network should be open to competition so we have 8 rail operators competing by running trains to different destinations. How trains in the SE compete with trains in the NW is unclear to me. Instead of decent travel we have bare bones operations where cut corners cost lives.
The road freight operators and subsidised by other road users whereas the railways have to pay in full for their tracks.
A forward sighted govt. would realise that inter-city rail travel should be invested in for the benefit of the people but hey profits not people is the rally cry of the capitalists.
Rail travel should be the mode of choice over 50 miles. Instead it is cheaper to travel by car.
I can drive the family from here to the capital and back [about 150 miles] for about £25. Take the train and we're looking at £120 for the four of us.
And then they wonder why the place of chock full of cars !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I am beink her all ze week.
Someone had a solution for this... A pair of LCD shutters for the license plate, each covering half of the digits. They turn on and off rapidly (so it wouldn't be too noticable to the eye) and exactly out of sequence. Thus, any photograph taken with a reasonably short exposure would capture only of the plate. A video camera would capture the whole plate on successive frames, but no single frame would have the entire plate number. Thus, the OCR would fail.
A spinning fan in front of the plate would also do the trick, but might take off someone's fingers.
Here's a googled automatic license plate reader.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I agree; if they implement this, the money should go to expanding the subway or putting a new useful road somewhere. What I don't like is the way it doesn't affect the rich in the least. Granted, they will spend the most money downtown, but the poor don't live in expensive suburbs; they mingle and transverse the bustling (congested) hub.
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
These aren't the same cameras as the police ones.
How would you suggest handling London's congestion problems?
Do you think the sequel will feature Congestion Charging?
Summation 2
If commuters are the problem, why not pass a law prohibiting companies within the congestion zone from hiring employees that don't live in the congestion zone? That should take care the problem.
For every problem there is a law that can solve it!
Next?
I guess I can see the point of not doing it then, as I've never been to england. I do think more cities should reconsider their downtown arrangements, though. Sure, it would be costly and there would be less space for businesses and housing, but so long as people can get in and out, the property values would do nothing but increase and buildings would go higher instead of having more girth. This increased property value would repay the city in the form of higher taxes etc...
And, no, I wasn't trying to be trollish. I'm often confused about elementary principles.
-= Why can't I add 'Anonymous Coward' to my list of Foes? =-
You forgot
6. Profit!!!
Summation 2
... over there in the Isles. What with this and surveillance cameras in the cities. Could gov't mandated doublespeak be far behind? That would be doubleplus ungood...
I'm not gloating. Really. Were not that far behind you here in the States y'know. Sigh
-- Shamus
Bleah!
...see the free use of roads as a divine right no-one should interfere with ...
Because we already PAID for them once when they were built.
----------
If your answer is Microsoft, you obviously didn't understand the question.
It's pretty ridiculous that they'd even allow this. Here in the states, I pay a toll to cross a bridge to get home. This is somewhat logical because maintainance of the bridge is not covered in the tax structure, so you pay if you use it.
Back home in Canada, there was a similar bridge near my home, and it was toll-free, because everyone payed for it out of their taxes.
The UK/Canadian system is more socialist - everyone pays a little to spread out the cost. The US takes a little more of a 'pay for play' approach with user fees.
So now Londoners are paying twice for the roads they drive on. I'd be pissed if I were they.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It doesn't have to fool a human inspector, just an OCR algorithm working on a fuzzy video feed. Just print random license plate numbers on paper in the same font and hold it up in your back window when you pass a camera. You don't even have to drive. Just hold up the papers while you walk by a camera. Might as well see how their .NET servers stand up to a good crap-flooding.
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...
The BBC article focuses on the problem of traffic problems increasing on the perimiter of the toll areas. A possible solution for this would to have a "fuzzy" or probablistic charging scheme with multiple perimiters. Within one perimiter, you have say, a 10% chance of being charged, and inside another, smaller area there may be a 50% chance of being charged. The highest congested areas can give a 100% chance of being charged.
That might, of course, bother people who un-luckily got charged more than they felt was right. Still you could get the same effect from charging in graduated increments, 10% toll in an outer perimiter, 50% in the middle and 100% in the peak area, so that drivers avoiding the toll will be spread out according to who wants to avoid how much of a toll.
The requested URL
If you use the correct type of fuel (I think it's Diesel) then you become exempt from the Congestion Charge.
Summation 2
Londers don't have to pay a £5 charge, they can apply for a 95% discount.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
My brain must be screwed in backwards today, I thought the description read "it reportedly uses character recognition from 007 surveillance cameras.."
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I was helping a security install at Stranraer, up in Scotland, where they had these cameras set up to catch stolen cars (as well as suspeced IRA members). I remember thinking it was a great example of safety at the expense of privacy.
While I was there, a guy was nailed because of his currently-in-the-process-of-divorcing-him wife had reported the care stolen. Pretty major inconvenience, I'd say, ripe for abuse in these cases.
As a motorcycle rider, I would like to note that this doesn't apply to two-wheeled vehicles.
As a privacy advocate, I would like everyone to note how full of BS the guys who put up these cameras were when they said the CC cameras would only be used to prevent crime.
Witold
www.witold.org
witold.org
Damn... So, at the current rates that would be about $7.44 to park all day long in London.
That is CRAZY cheap compared to parking all day here in Boston (Somehere around $20-$25)...
- Mobster75
When I was in London some years ago, I actually got a headache from the traffic fumes and that's never happened before or since.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
That system seems a bit clumsy. It sounds fairly expensive, too.
.NET software sounds really - pardon the expression - 1990s.
In Singapore, they have a system where every car is fitted with a card reader for a cash card. Every time you enter a zone where they want to keep congestion down (I only saw one while I was there) it automatically deducts $1 off of your cash card. Taxis and busses entering the area charge more, too. (Busses are also done on with an electronic card system. You wave your magnetic cash card in front of the reader when you get on, and when you get off. Prices are based on how long you've been on the bus.)
700 cameras and a lot of
On the privacy thing, they wipe the picture of your car after they've found the plate on the list of people who've paid. So as long as you pay, no privacy problem.
One of the exemptions is for "Vehicles with 9 or more seats". Can't wait to see the new breed of monster SUV's that suddenly become popular in central London . . .
Uhhh, excuse me, but I'm sure I could find a lot worse things wrong with *other* countries than a few cameras and some sensationalist newspapers.
Bush anyone?
This is a first attempt at curing a problem in the most congested city in the world. It won't be long before other worldwide cities will be hitting the same level of gridlock, so I don't think we should be putting down this first attempt at a solution, especially as it involves the technology sector. There are jobs in the evolution of these kinds of systems, which before long will need implementing in many other cites around the world.
Harrods is outside the zone, but yeah you get the general idea.
He's a commie, he even writes for the morning star. Can't be doing with any socilist types in the Labor party can we.
BTW an indipendant report said that the congestion charges might actually work. (it's on the BBC news web site somewhere, but there serch is shit)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
In fact initially it doesnt look like a troll, but then comes the whole insulting bit.
Outsourcing to another country really is a bad idea though.
My license plate is dirty?
I have a colored or tinted over over it?
I don't HAVE a plate
I borrow my friends plate
etc etc
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
Hmm...traffic in London didn't seem so bad in those commercials for The Getaway on PS2. I guess someone at the production studio decided that 5mph car chases just aren't that fun.
No Sig For You
Because we already PAID for them once when they were built.
To echo your eloquent use of capitals, the cost of their maintenance is ONGOING.
£5 per car, per day. The bigwigs on expences who travel in their BMWs will drive through without blinking an eyelid. Mr Bloggs who has to drive in and is on a Teachers salary has to pay the same £5. £150 for 30 days travel is a big dent - up to £1800 a year. The people who need to use the roads (dont ask me why they need to) will be put off. The vans, £40,000 BMWs & limos will drive right through. Surly something is wrong here?
Motorola and Nextel have put together: a cell phone, GPS, internet connection, Java programability. With this it is easy to track a cell phone, how long until we are required to carry on of these along with our driver's license? What? you don't want to? You must have something to hide, you must be a terrorist!
Free cell phone tracking
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
Car Parks just outside the charging zone have been, and AFAIK, still are, charging about £20 a day for parking.
"Neither of them speak proper english"
And why would people in England not be speaking their English language correctly?
If your car has been converted to use liquid petrolium gas you dont have to pay. An LPG conversion costs around £1000 so it may or may not be worth it depending on your usage.
http://www.nofiver.com/freelondon.html
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
By giving the subjects no democracy at all and machine gunning them when we felt it necessary (well, the ones with the darker skin colours anyway)? And you people complain that Microsoft are evil?
Pffft. When was the last time you tried parking in London? 1964? :o)
I don't know where you heard about places charging £4.60 but thats rubbish.
Just because you pay a fiver doesn't mean you're guaranteed a parking space inside the zone. Places outside of the zone are hiking their prices because of the increased demand to park in that area (so capturing the "i'll drive as close as I can and then tube it" group of people).
You can't find a daily rate of less than £20 in the area at the moment. Next week it'll probably hit £25.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
They've already increased the number of buses, now hopefully people will actually be able to get somewhere on them. I've absolutely no idea whether the scheme will work, but something had to be done and it's not often you get a politician prepared to risk his hide on something risky.
Hmm. One of the main reasons why people were in favour of the Charge is that it was promised that the extra revenue would be directly invested in improving public transport services so people have less incentive to drive in the first place.
I wonder how much the cost of implementing the system on Windows will detract from those improvements...
they are talking about GB here not the US. Secondly, the taxes you pay for road maintenace are NOT for your usage and damage but for the continued INFRASTRUCTURE maintenance, ie the trucks that bring food to safeway for you to buy, the trucks that deliver mail to the post office for you, the gas trucks from Chevron that ensure everyone else gets where they are going. The vehicle registration, licensing, and use fee's you pay cover your access. Thirdly there IS NO RIGHT TO USE, it is a privilege, earned and subject to regulation and revocation. Fourthly the GGB is privately owned and run for a profit, unlike the rest of the state bridges, another bright idea brought to you by greedy self serving politicos. All that said I STILL AGREE with you, and I am glad that somthing like this would get killed in the US.
PS Burien is a cool place, some LAN party friends live there, and we meet a couple of times a year for Frag Fests.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Shouldn't they just charge that one old lady in front who's driving 9 mph in the middle of the street holding everyone else up? Or those mini-van driving soccer moms (maybe, soccer hooligan moms in U.K.)
Why is this sad? The situation in London is diabolical and something has been done. Personally I think it is a good step in the right direction.
As for the mighty empire bit, that's so 1890's! Imperialism is just so out of vogue now, and hopefully will remain so. The Empire was good for Britons, but many people from the quarter of the rest of the world involved might disagree.
BTW, do you know who was the first to use chemical weapons against a civilian population? It was Britain. Do you know where? It was ironically, Iraq. Who was the first to use concentration camps? Yes, again it was the British in Africa. How's that for a mighty empire?
The real problem in London is that the city (central London) was built a long time before the roads carried cars, or even horse-and-carts. The idea that traffic congestion could possibly be a problem in London was never even conceived of being possible.
In the meantime, the central area of London has become one the busiest places on the planet, and the roads are just incapable of coping. True, it's not as crowded or densely populated as Tokyo or New York for example, but the situation in London is fairly unique because of the way in which London has evolved. As others have said, the land has become so valuable that rebuilding or acquiring more land for roads (or replanning the central city area) is just not a realistic option.
The only option is to reduce the traffic - cars mostly - on the roads. And to do this, you have to discourage people from driving in central london, and encourage the use of public transport. It's a very serious problem and getting worse all of the time.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
A fairly concerted campaign pointing out the congestion reducing characteristics of motorcycles made sure of that.
That's why all the bike safety adverts are on the TV and cinema.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The plates on the front and back of UK cars are, and have always been, called 'Number Plates'.
Even the BBC has been known to get this wrong.
In the UK you have to pay Road Tax so that you can use the puplic highways, however you are also taxed at over 300% on petrol (gas). Of course the amount of money the government spends on roads etc does n't even come upto the amount taken in Road Tax.. As a side note the Duke of Westminster owns a large parts of Central London including the roads.
for someone to chastise another for not reading the article, and then lamenting a potential outcome that the article dismisses!
Specifically- given the already steep prices in the affected circle, the land value most likely won't increase, despite intial speculation. But don't take my word for it, read the article.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Quadruple the cost of owning a vehical.
I mean price, tax, liscense, and fuel. Also be sure to have a cheap and easy way for people to get around without a motor vehical.
Exclude motorcycles, motor powered scooters (like segways). Widen the side walk and make the road very bicycle friendly.
ANything other then a wide spread massive change is just a atttempt to get more money instead of raising taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I really don't get how this type of measure is going to achieve anything, if the price is uniform.. If the charge were to be indexed on the car owner's revenue, perhaps it would deter traffic, but as it is now, it's just a matter of having enough revenue to have the right to drive..
With a fixed price, they can't make the price too high because it would be too painful for
the commoners, and if they charge too low, then the measure is useless.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
I have no points, but I must mod up.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
In Washington, DC, there are a large number of red-light cameras, and now speed cameras. My wife found out that the speed camera OCR works just fine. Twice in a week. $200 per violation. The tickets were mailed several weeks after the violations.
The picture we got in the mail had the car and an enlargement of the rear plate. The counter on the picture was in the tens of thousands. Needless to say, DC is now collecting over $10 million per year in revenue this way.
My impression is that there is a combination of computer OCR pre-processing and human checking. At $200 per violation, a couple of checks by the human eye is totally affordable.
So in the US you're saying that people have most things bigger, and do more with more ? heh :)
If you get a picture of you in your car speeding with a speeding ticket attached, just send them a picture of the money
Something people keep seem to forget about the London congestion charge. If your car is an LPG (gas) vehicle with a converted engine. There is no charge to pay. This conversion doesn't cost a huge amount and offers savings in fuel which is very expensive in the UK.
I live just outside the charging zone, but I don't even own a car. If I did, I'd have it converted just for the joy of total exemption!
I assume you know what a merkin is?
about working from home?
Too many cars in london... what shall we do? I know, roll out broad-band and get 50% of the people working from home 50% of the time....
Wow an instant 25% decrease in all congestion.
London should place a not-working from home tax on the companies that can easly support working from home.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
no compleatly true!
feel free to flame away if you can rebutt what I've said.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
How long before shirts, jackets, etc. come with random number plates as the logo on the back?
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
When I lived in San Francisco, I lived on the westernmost edge of the city and worked on the easternmost edge, a distance of about 7.5 miles by the most direct road. I also happened to live at the end of a streetcar line (N Judah, no I didn't think you cared) that ran practically to my office. So, I could drive my car, ride the train, or ride a bicycle to work. It took about 20 minutes to drive the car, and another 10 to 15 minutes to park and then walk to my office in the morning, with the return trip taking about 30 minutes. On the train, it was 45 minutes each way unless there was some sort of problem on the subway and we got stuck for an hour underground (only happened once or twice a month). With my bicycle, I could get to my office in 30 minutes, and get home in about 40 minutes (less energy at the end of the day). Oh, and if I rode my motorcycle, it was 25 minutes each way, no worries.
Frankly, the car was the worst option and I wound up giving it away and just riding either my bicycle or my motorcycle.
I reckon that in London, as in any other major metropolitan area, the people who drive their cars in feel like they need to drive to get everything done. If they don't need the cars, they'll use other ways of getting around. But to be better than a car, transit would have to be either significantly more convenient or significantly and reliably faster.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
the poor in London rely on busses and that is exactly where the money from the congestion charge will go
Yes, and *snicker*, I have some swam^H^H^H^H undeveloped resort property in Florida that you may be interested in.
I'll believe that the money will go to public transportation when it happens, and not a moment sooner - and I won't be holding my breath, either.
Are you telling me that the destruction of Arthur Dent's home was some sort of anomaly?
So if you see people walking around London with big signs, something along the lines ofyou'll know what they're trying to do.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Running water, flush toliets, and three meals a day seems to be a step up from what someone would think of being a concentration camp. But then again you might not have actually read the link because you are just a coward.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
anywhere in Westminster Council's territory.
Does my bum look big in this?
Your comment got me worried - what if some bastard put MY plate on his shirt and started walking around London?!
Fortunately, the Transport For London website has the answer in its FAQ:
What happens if the cameras get a number plate wrong?
All number plates identified as having been within the congestion charging zone without having paid the appropriate charge will be cross referenced with the photographed image to ensure that the cameras have not misread the number plate. If this check identifies that a number plate has been incorrectly read then it will be manually corrected or, if unreadable, the image will be deleted.
Steve.
It's been many years since I have been to London, so bear with me if it sounds like I am talking out of my ass, 'cause I am.
What about tax abatements to encourage companies to relocate outside of this congested area? Suburbs in the US have had a pretty good track record (depending on your point of view) in getting companies to relocate. This won't solve all of the problems and I understand that some organizations cannot move (hospitals for instance). However, if the problem is too many people commuting to London then try to move their communte point out of the city. The people who can afford it will pay the fee and companies will use fee reembursement as a recruiting tool. It will be the working middle class that won't be able to afford the 25 pounds a week. I guess I don't understand why it is this group that has to pay for the city planners inability to manage growth.
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
He didn't say that your taxes pay for the trucks, but they do pay for the maintenance of the highway infrastructure that you benefit from. Some of those include the goods and services that are cheaper or that exists at all because of the highway system. Additionally add in the defense of the country, which is what the highways were originally designed for, rapid troop movements.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
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.
Say there's a one-lane dirt road that goes between two towns, and it has gotten awfully crowded because people now commute between these towns a lot.
So you replace it with a 20-lane superhighway. I really cannot see how that'd make the commute slower.
I don't think this theory applies to a highway connecting two seperate towns. Here there would be some settlement along the road, assuming it's long enough, to service the travelers, but it wouldn't have more congestion. The reason this theory comes up in urban planning is because any road you build outside a city will connect some suburb to the city. The land reached by the road is 4x greater for every doubling of its length, you reach a large number of single family homes very quickly. But the space left for lanes into the city shrinks the closer you get to the city center, so if everyone is heading there all you do by widening a feeder highway is move the bottleneck closer to the city. This is bad, you effectively lower the marginal cost of moving further away from the center of the city (with the no uncongested highway), and increase the cost of living for everyone (in terms of time spent in traffic). This forces people out further, increasing average trip time and congesting the road again. Now everyone is spending more time in traffic, a lose-lose situation for the city and its suburbs. (There are always some winners, for instance, the housing developers that buy some farmland to convert to housing when the highway comes.)
In Soviet Russia it's
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
This could be good news for telecommuting. I just wish that more U.S. companies would allow telecommuting. I do not mean 100% of the time, but I could do my job from home just as well as I can do it from work. When I NEED to drive in and do something, I can do it. If there is an emergency, find I can drive -- I will probably miss the rush hours and it won't take me more than 20 minutes to get there. And if it was that important, then why didn't I get the approval to have a redundant system in place?
(ANSWER: because you are our little IT bitch! you have to work 50 hours min every week on salary)
As time goes on, something is going to have to give. More cities, more spread out, new transit systems that do not exist today, or something.
I would take a 10% - 20% pay cut to telecommute, and I mean REAL telecommuting with a Cisco 1750, VWIC, DS1, IP Phone, everything.
Pay by cheque. They need far more paperwork to process than the other payment methods (credit card, SMS, etc.), and if everybody does it, it will cause them a major inconvience. Muhahahahaha!
-- Wibble
Im not saying we should take our lead from the french or anything, but Paris had the same problem and managed to modernize the city's layout for modern roads and rail (by 1880s standards).
Of course it did require the relocation of thousands of tenament tenants. A nice by-product of this was a vast reduction in diseases,
They could go the other way. Ban all the cars.
:)
Maybe put up segway rental booths
Lets see, a very complex software project written by a bunch of Indians on an M$ platform, given the general shodiness of Indian programmers and the problematic MS platform, this should be a multi-year debacle, I'll be watching the BBC for humar value as the disaster unfolds. Also how long before the public revolts against this type of suviellance for taxation. The Indian Times article said "Indians are very technically profficient" if this were true companies would not have to hire consultants like me to clean up all the messes made by Indian programmers, when will they ever learn cheap work is not good, good work is not cheap. MM
How long before shirts, jackets, etc. come with random number plates as the logo on the back?
No, hang on...
How long before shirts, jackets, etc. come with Ken Livingstone's number plates as the logo on the back?
TomV
Is it really a good idea to have congestion fees? They are charging you money when the traffic system is not working.
You didn't get there on time? That will be $5, please!
Your computer has crashed. You have been charged $8.
SF is onlly 7.5 miles across east to west? And it takes more than 10 minutes to get there? Traffic must be awful.
To give you some idea of how bad London's traffic problems are, if you travelled at the average morning rush-hour traffic speed, a 7.5 mile journey across London would take you 37 and a half minutes.
reading back, I worded that poorly, you are correct, we don't pay for the trucks, but for the additional damage, and support they require, in order to maintain the delivery system as a whole. Another person already pointed out the national implications of the highway system so I won't go into that aspect. I think the US has missed the boat regarding rail line shipping, and we are paying the price for trying to go with the more flexible but MUCH more expensive system of roadways for shipping vital goods.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Perhaps you haven't looked at the roads around here lately? Not much maintenance going on here. And even if there were, they are already taxing me per mile via fuel taxes. If they want to force people to use public transportation, then the proper solution would be to pass a law closing the roads to private transportation, not dick around with the tax structure.
----------
If your answer is Microsoft, you obviously didn't understand the question.
£5 per Londoner per drive into central London. Should just about cover the cost of those .NET licenses :)
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Not only is this a stupid idea that is doomed to failure, the work was done outside of the UK. At the moment the UK IT industry is already in need of some help and the government should set an example and support the UK workforce.
Most manufacturing industries are already dying, we should be trying to save our high-tech industries too!
I could not care less about the fact that I did not improperly use the term hardly doubt! :-) Seriously though that was a bit of a brain misfire there, combinging the thoughts that I doubt that they make enough, and hardly believe that they make enough...
So note the license plate numbers of all of your enemies, and mount them in your back window. Why evade payment when you could just redirect it?
didn't say anything about tax dollars.
KFG
So if you take it (the charge) to court as a mistake, it stays on the system for the next year or so until your court date?
Great....
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
How about telecommuting now that we suddenly have all of this excess fiber capacity? . Oh, sorry, management (I be one) has to grind the workforce under the thumb of injustice. . If I could work from home you would NEVER see me on the roads during peak travel time (aka, rush hour(s)).
Tisha Hayes
You don't want to spend $300 on a bike. If you do you'll need that $50 a month for maintainence, and have a bike that never runs right anyway.
Spend $750 and you'll spend $50 per *year* on maintainence the first few years. Either save up for it or buy it on credit and make the payments for 6 months. The interest will be minimal on that amount.
Get a hybrid. Insist it be fitted with road tires. You'll hate every minute of pedaling mountain bike tires on the road. Avocet and Ritchey make my favorites. Get kevlar belted tires. They're a bit heavier and ride a bit less smoothly but they really do reduce punctures to a minimum and for a pure commuter it's worth it.
Unfortunately I don't know anyone who's making a real commuter bike at the moment. Trek had a nice one for a year or two, but it's gone now. *Real* commuter bikes don't sell well enough to make it worth a major manufacturers while.
A real commuter bike would have a hybrid frame and brakes, a Shimano 7 speed internally geared hub ( like the old Sturmey-Archers, but better) fenders ( these you can at least add easily) and a custom fitted rear rack ( these you can have made, but it's pricey).
You'll also want a "cargo net" type rack bungee and a bag. The ideal bag would be a "bike messenger" type that's been modified into a sort of laptop case style that can also be mounted on a rear rack. Again, I've seen these, but I don't know anyone actually making them at the moment.
Performance ( a mailorder house out of North Carolina) makes a nice attache/laptop type messenger bag, I use one and wouldn't be without it, but it doesn't rack mount. They also make some decent and moderatly priced pannier type bags as well. ( I've got hundreds of hours of use out of these bags, and expect to get thousands more).
Gloves. don't ride without gloves. I mean it. Nothing ruins a week or two more than having to live them with skinned palms. Trust me, I've determined this empirically.
Well, unless it's having to live with a concussion and cracked skull, I've determined this empirically too, but nobody seems to like the "helmet lecture" so, I've brought up the subject and you'll do what you do.
KFG
What is your solution? Something has to be done about traffic in central london. What are YOU going to suggest?
Will they send a bill to the french, belgians, dutch, polish and all the other foreign registered cars?
Nope. A friend of mine has a belgian registered car, and so manages to get out of any speeding fines etc.
If you walk past the camera holding a license plate, will the real owner of that plate get charged? Could be a popular practical joke.
Any taxes you paid covered the construction of the road and probably not all of that (Roads are just as if not more subsidized than public transport). But the roads need to be maintained. Plus, have you ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? If everyone drives as much as they possible can the traffic doesn't move and no one goes anywhere. Is that what you want?
But you don't question the morality of the British fighting the war in the first place, interesting.
Moscow has the busiest system in the world (over 9 million trips daily), and by far the best looking stations (especially the older ones). NYC's subway is my least favorite out of the four I've used (NYC, London, Paris, Moscow), it's just so... dirty in comparison.
You are assuming everyone is trying to get into the city centre. I live about 20 km from the city centre (a city with about 2 million people), in an averagely-dense but rapidly growing urban area. Until recently most of the roads out this far were single lane, and there have been a LOT of traffic congestion problems. One by one they are doubling the roads, and each time it DEFINITELY helps ease congestion, often shaving more than half the commute time off. When there is only one lane, traffic backs up sometimes for kilometers all along the way, particularly at turnoffs, because nobody can go around when somebody wants to turn. Double the lane up, and people can go around, which eases up traffic a lot.
Most of these people are NOT trying to get into the city centre. The typical commute is about 10 km, to decentralised mini-CBDs outside of the city center. There are many office complexes around this +/- 10 km distance from the city centre. So widening the roads is universally helping traffic congestion.
What currently also happens is that the traffic has forced larger numbers of people to take long short-cuts through urban areas, which isn't nice for the home-owners there, but in some cases helps local businesses in such areas. (The opening of a new toll booth recently has pushed many commuters to go through some previously quiet neighboorhoods, which are experiencing mini economic booms). Widening the main routes definitely puts more people back onto them and out of the neighboorhoods.
Around here though there is extremely little public transport to speak of, so the only practical choice is usually to have ones own car. And people NEED to get to work. They are going to drive one way or another. So the ONLY solution is to widen the roads.
Interestingly though, the city council has pulled a few other tricks to try coax people to use alternative routes (and also to coax people to drive slower) .. one of which is that they modified the traffic light cycle times such that you get many more red lights along particular routes.
Talking about this congestion charge, I'd love to see it work. I'm a cycle courier in london, congestion shortens my lifespan, fumes, limited visibility, kamikaze pedestrians walking through stationary traffic traffic in which I am moving and even worse motorbikes (although motorbikes make more noise). There's a point, all two wheelers are exempted from the charge. fair enough they don't cause congestion, but what about accidents (some people think that in central london you can wander around roads as if they are not there .. I never understood this ... "the tourist effect"?)?
Whatsmore who is on the roads when the charge will apply, which is basically during working hours? It's people who (like me) have to be on the roads, it's their job, couriers, taxi drivers, hauliers and those suited types going about their business. Now I'd love to see the suited types and everyone else decide to cycle more, or walk more or think of different ways of getting about, or change your business so you can get about less. Past a point organically grown, unplanned cities like london start to grind to a halt if everyone needs to get about anyway. To get across the north or south of the city, I either have to have an incredibly detailed knowledge of the city (london taxi drivers have to study for 5 years and learn 10s of thousands of streets to get their licence, in NY I think it takes 2 days) and go through residential streets, or follow the main "A" roads in then out again, or if you're lucky maybe you can use one of the tacked on, jam packed ring roads.
Thinking about it (this is coming straight from brain to keyboard) cycling really could be the answer. The increase in capacity would be incredible, especially with the use of green space and cycle only paths to get from place to place. up to a point cyclists on the roads will use excess capacity between cars at no extra cost, but if too many people did that then we'd be in car and cycle gridlock, an absolute nightmare. The problem with getting people to use bikes is that they do not consider 10 miles to be a reasonable distance to cycle, most people really are pretty sedentary. One of the first things I noticed when I started cycling regularly with this job was the improvement in my fitness, when I stopped excercising my heart rate noticably slowed down very quickly. I thought to myself, this is how the human body *should* be working, most people can barely run to catch the bus. This whole car philosophy is silly, driving kids to school, driving to work driving to the corner shop. Where do you walk? Our cities are already overtaken by vast strips of tarmac. Use of cycles means less buses and taxis, less private vehicles leaving motors for heavy goods and long distance (should we be forced to need a motor for long distances?) still a lot, but reducing it to what it needs to be.
Well I could go on all day (are you still here!?) the whole point of this rant is that this needs to be a proper dialogue between everyone, the mayor just helping it along, making everything work and the ideas coming from the bottom up. That's what all this democracy business is about isn't it? But it seems to me that the thining behind our use of cars dosn't seem right to me.
So if I stand near the camera's line of sight holding a number plate, the number plate will be read and the owner of the number plate will receive a demand for the money? Cool. I shall be trying this on Monday, and probably going to court about it in a couple of months. -- silas
You're asking me to justify the morality of a war?
# init 5
Connection closed.
Oh...
Great idea! Replace all the parking space by roads. I'm sure this would result in less congestion. If you cannot park at your destination you'll be less inclined to take the car.
::insert Neil Diamond song here::
Believe me it's wrong! I often pay over £5 per hour in central london, around the edge of "the zone" (as we will now call it) you're looking at £2-3 per hour at a guess.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
"The charge will encourage people to use public transportation."
"ecourage?" Fucking Mafia "encourages" people to use their protection services, this is just highway robbery.
Why not just eliminate the roads or not allow cars on the roads at all... that would eliminate the traffic problems and seems far more equitable than charging people for the fair use of a public way.
These people weren't rounded up because of who they are. They were rounded up because they were combatants, leaders of combatants, or members of group of terrorists. Its more of a military prison than a concentration camp. As far as the "Seig Heil!" goes, if the Nazi's treated the people in its concentration camps as well as the people who are in Quantanimo Bay prison, 6 million Jews wouldn't have died. Sometimes the trolls are those with an incredibly low number.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Darn, fresh out of mod points, mod parent up as informative please. Thanks.
Can you even get a train out of the station in 30 seconds? What a crock.
Paris does well with 5 to 30 minuste between trains. The metro rocks and the Paris train system goes everwhere.
If people HAVE to drive cars in midtown London, the tube sucks. There is no reason for things to be that way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can't fix the tube. Charging people 5 pounds just won't work. I know, we have to kill the people we don't like. That's it, yeah, bring on the next ice age.
Hey you, get away from me. What? -
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Wasn't there just a whole huge discussion about RFID tags in tires and how they could be used to RELIABLY AND CHEAPLY record every car passing by, even on a 12 lane highway where everyone is doing 100mph? And how they COULD do the same thing with OCR but RFIDs would be superior in almost every way? So why isn't London doing that?
This from the same country that banned vegetable oil fuel because there is no pollution tax paid on it, even though it pollutes far less than fossil fuels.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
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.
Hey now, I resent that! After getting a 3" wide belt, and wearing it 2 inches too tight, I look 10 lbs less! Put me on TV and I look like I should.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
Why not increase your gasoline tax from $2.50/gallon to $10/gallon? That should fix the traffic "problem", which is other people doing the same thing you are because there are not better alterntives available for either of you.
Damn all those other upitty people! Serfs should be more tied to the land and not allowed to work anywhere they can't get on foot. You and others are willing to waste your time in that traffic to earn a living, the government might as well take the fruit of your labor every way it can.
Let me tell you how it's going to be. One for you 19 for me ...
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, this is the system that even *Londoners* don't understand and haven't been fully informed about the payment methods (at least according to my family down there, including one High Court barrister), and that *nobody* outside London - even visitors - has a chance of understanding or planning for in advance. If you're from Newcastle and happen to be passing in the general vicinity of London to visit relatives when you get caught by a camera, bang, you're nailed - and because you know nothing about how it works, the first you know about it is when a fine for far more than the actual charge arrives at your home a week or so later. Yes, an entirely fair system...
You must think in Russian.
I'd only add that if you ride on bike paths you're also a target for inline skaters, joggers, old ladies walking their dogs down the middle of the path, etc., none of whom will be paying attention to right of way rules and all of whom will bitch at *you* for being on the bike path, on a bike. Go figure.
Frankly, I just avoid them like the plague. They're a nasty and dangerous place to ride a bike. I always feel much safer on an eight lane during rush hour than I do on a bike path.
But then I've been "Effective" cycling since before Forester wrote the book, which, since he has, everyone taking up commuting, or any other cycling for that matter, should read.
And practice.
KFG
Uhm, the car park at North Greenwich tube station is £4 for 24 hours. It's just off two of the busiest main roads into London (the A12 and the A2) and only 10 minute tube ride to the West End. Five minutes to the business district.
I park there a lot. It's usually packed full and you have to wait 20 minutes to get a space though. Then you have to pay £5 for a travelcard.. so driving into London is a lot cheaper if you actually have a space there.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Sorry, Newcastle-upon-Tyne gets my vote. The Metro is often claimed to be faster and more efficient than the Tube.
;-)
That said, Newcastle is the only British city I've been in where the traffic rivals London. So maybe something isn't quite so right up there after all
mogorific carpentry experiments
>Because we already PAID for them once when they were built.
Not a civil engineer, eh? Or an architect/urban planner? Or state/municipal administrator? Or economist, or construction worker, or even a snow shoveler or... what are you?
The closest way roads get to being a one-time expense is if they're bike paths. Even then they get weathered. Anything bigger and faster than a motorcycle degrades concrete, yes, concrete.
Even parking spaces have recurring costs. In addition to pothole-filling and salting/snowplowing, a parking space is "renting" valuable land that could be part of a store, home, etc. In a built-up area, such opportunity cost can be several thousand dollars a year.
For that matter, you don't appear to be a computer developer either.
And while I think that a use tax would work better, I think the whole idea is wrong-headed. Raising the price of operating a vehicle in London, no matter how it is done, is probably not going to decrease traffic all that much. They're trying to solve one problem (too many cars) with the solution to another (not enough money). The solution to the real problem (too many cars) is probably a combination of: innovative motorways to decrease congestion; introduction of better public transportation; and disallowing motor traffic in central areas. This shold all be accompanied by educating the next generation of young people not to think of automotive transport as the inalienable right of every human being.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned (or maybe I missed it) that drivers of alternative fuel vehicles are exempt from the charge.
It's not only the amount of traffic on the roads in central London that's the problem, it's also the level of pollution. So hopefully this initiative will encourage the use of less polluting vehicles.
Pollution and congestion has been a problem for years in central London, and even if you can't stand Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, you have to admire him for actually doing something about it, rather than moan about it like other politicians.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Polluting should be expensive, thus only rich people should be able to afford it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Should a politician favour local firms so they earn money or should he save money from his budget?
Damned if you do one thing, damned if you do the other.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.