From Boris Johnson's transport strategy:
In the life of the strategy, the Mayor may consider road user charging schemes if other measures at his disposal are deemed insufficient to meet the strategy's goals and where there is a reasonable balance between the objectives of any scheme and its costs and other impacts.
It's point E21 in the executive summary - see page 19. Similar material was present in previous mayor Ken Livingstone's transport strategy too. Some London Conservatives and Ken-haters, who'd convinced themselves that Transport for London was a conspiracy of Communist vegetarians, leaped upon this as proof of hidden agendas to ban go-faster stripes, cross-dress Mondeo Man, nationalise the Victoria sponge and so on.
Such screams of outraged discovery have not been repeated under Ken's successor, despite the existence of point E21. This is unsurprising. Boris has cut the congestion charging zone in half and made plain his view that extending it to the suburbs would be "a blatant tax on the motorist." Please note in passing that Boris calls the C-charge a "charge" when he's feeding the media tales of billing Obama for his embassy's poor manners, but a "tax" when he's thinking of ballot boxes in Bromley.
But whatever its name, he's against more of it. And so, for now at least, is Ken who has ruled out bringing back the western extension that Boris - in the end rather reluctantly - abolished should he re-take City Hall in May. This is a sad state of affairs given that estimates of the annual cost of congestion to London's economy range from £2 billion to £4 billion and that it is calculated that 4,000 Londoners a year die prematurely as a result of poor air quality generated mostly by road traffic.
The report commissioned by the London Assembly's Greens published last Friday is therefore very welcome. Compiled by Professor John Whitelegg, it is called Pay-as-you-go: managing traffic impacts in a world-class city, and takes as its premise that Boris's ambition to make London the "best big city in the world" cannot be realised unless its road traffic is controlled more effectively.
The report reviews research which has found congestion charging is effective wherever it's been introduced and looks at technological advances that would make a London-wide pay-as-you-go road pricing system technically possible. It addresses the problem of selling such a radical idea to the public as follows:
Public support is very closely linked to concepts of fairness and equity. In the context of London with millions of trips being made by public transport, walking and cycling it is self-evidently fair to levy a charge on the much smaller number of car trips that cause a much larger environmental burden than non-car trips. If that revenue is then deployed for the benefit of all Londoners and for a cleaner, greener London then that is likely to win and retain public support.
This may seem madly optimistic in view of recent public rejections of congestion charging in Manchester and Edinburgh, an issue explored by a man from London Travelwatch at the City Hall launch of the report. He reminded us that mayor Livingstone introduced charging in the face of opposition from everyone from (surprise, surprise) the Evening Standard to his own advisors and that not every politician is as single-minded and ready to take big risks as Ken.
Still, as the report points out, road pricing is unusual in that it unites economists concerned with efficiency, environmentalists concerned with pollution and CO2 emissions, and social justice campaigners who want transport policies that help women, children and those on low incomes. There is also the question of London's need to raise money in the age of austerity. Professor Whitelegg reaches the following conclusion:
The revenue benefits of a London-wide pay as you go scheme are substantial and it is highly unlikely that the objectives of the Mayor's Transport Strategy can be achieved in an era of declining public finance, rising costs of supplying and maintaining public transport operations and no significant increase in revenue from road pricing.
Put in very clear language it is our view that a London-wide road pricing scheme is essential and without it congestion will worsen, air pollution will worsen, the legal consequences of failing to meet air quality standards will grow in severity and fall on the GLA, the health of Londoners will suffer, CO2 reduction targets will be missed and London will stand no chance whatsoever in achieving "best in class" status that it so richly deserves.
Read the whole report here.
