Congestion charging

Written by Sally Hamwee and published in Goldmine, published by the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors on Fri 23rd May 2003

A friend who lives in central London, inside the congestion charge zone and therefore entitled to a 90 per cent discount, had some difficulty registering for the discount. He sent off the form in very good time, plus all the evidence required to prove his address, plus his credit card details to pay a whole year's charge. Six phone calls later when he was told he hadn't sent the form, or the money, and so on (each time the different operators wished him a nice day), during which period the credit card was stolen (that one wasn't their fault), he finally spoke to someone who sorted it all out – and he was so relieved he almost asked her to marry him. Two weeks later, he received five penalty notices – and realised what she meant when she said 'That will be fine'.

Happily, that's not been everyone's experience. There have been stories about 95 year old ladies in Leeds, who would never dream of driving in London, getting fines, but by and large the technology has worked well.

Of course, it's relatively easy to check on wrongly issued penalty notices, not least through the records of the appeals system, which mirrors that for parking in CPZs. Conversely, discovering how many drivers do not pay but are not picked up by either the fixed cameras or the mobile units, and so not fined, will be harder.

Some facts: the congestion charge applies Monday to Friday, 7am to 6.30pm – so there's talk now of a new peak, just before 7 (can't claim to have experienced that myself) and after 6.30 (I think that may be true). The original plan was for it to last until 7pm, but lobbying from theatres and other leisure operators in the West End got that changed. The hours are a problem for people who have to be at work long before, or long after, public transport is operating fully. The Mayor's answer is that he is improving the night bus service – true, but not to the extent this would require.

But you have to acknowledge that his analysis on the first day of the scheme was spot on: given the choice of marching with two million others to protest against the war on the Saturday, or with 50 market traders and no journalists on a bitterly cold Monday at 5am, Iain Duncan Smith chose the latter.

People who work unsocial hours are often among the lower paid, which has been a worry to us. Drawing the boundary for a means test would have been even harder than the zone's physical boundary, and in any event the Mayor was advised that there was no legal means of doing so. The Lib Dem group has taken the view that it is for employers to pick up the tab, and indeed elsewhere in the GLA forest the fire and police authorities have done so (admittedly there is a circularity in this).

The Lib Dems fought, and won, an exemption for blue badge holders wherever they live, so that visitors to London are treated the same as London residents.

You can pay the £5 a day through the internet, by phone, by texting, at various garages and other retail outlets and at machines at large car parks, and if you enter the zone on a day when you'd not planned to, you can pay after entry. If an accident requires a diversion into the zone, you will not be fined, but if the cameras pick your car up five hours later near Selfridges, you can't use that excuse. You can pay for more than one day at a time, but only for specific days – arranging say ten days' credit was precluded both because the technology wouldn't cope and because the Mayor wanted people to stop and think each day whether they needed to use their cars. However, I've heard him move away from that justification recently. Perhaps he's trying to avoid being characterised as anti-car.

Where to set the boundary was always going to be contentious. The inner ring road which forms the boundary – Euston Road, Vauxhall Bridge, Tower Bridge are points on it, so those who know London will see that the area within the zone is little more than the City and West End - is, in a large part of south London, no more than a set of signs along roads which bisect communities. We have argued throughout that the Mayor should be open-minded about tweaking the scheme to try to deal with the very real problems for people who say live just outside the zone and need to take an elderly relative to the doctor within it. He is champing at the bit to extend the zone, but more as a matter of general policy than to address such issues.

Wherever the boundary is there will be concerns about congestion just outside it, about rat-running and, where it is easy to drive to a station in outer London, 'railheading'. These are all real concerns, and any authority considering a similar charge would be well-advised to undertake very thorough surveys, and have a very thorough monitoring programme, so that it can judge the impact of a charge against an authoritative baseline.

Judging the impact on business may be particularly hard. The scheme started at a time when the economy is going through a rough patch (to use deliberately non-technical language). London's business community – in the shape of the bigger businesses – has been a strong backer of the scheme, anticipating the cost savings to be achieved through time savings. There is much criticism among small businesses, and one of the Assembly's roles as the scrutiny body has been to encourage small business to provide detailed, evidence-based comment rather than anecdote and generalised anxiety.

Other concerns? Certainly safety. Ironically perhaps, with traffic speeded up comes the issue of increased dangers to pedestrians and cyclists and indeed to the speeding drivers. Motorcycles are not subject to the charge, and there is a lobby arguing that TWMVs and PTWs (two-wheeled motor vehicles and powered two-wheelers, I now know) should be, on safety and on environmental (emissions) grounds. One of the disappointments of the scheme as a whole is that, given London's generally poor air quality, it has not led to any improvements. And that may mean that in other cities it is hard to overcome one particular problem, that every newspaper has used its motoring correspondent, rather than an environment reporter, to cover the scheme.

The income from the scheme, after its costs, is required to go towards public transport provision, and a focus of the Assembly has been how much will in fact be generated. The Mayor's line is that the scheme is about dealing with congestion, not raising money, and the amount predicted has fallen as the scheme was developed. We have throughout pointed to the proposed spending from the income being directed to core activities such as 'safe routes to schools', with the danger of losing the work if the income is not earned.

What are the lessons so far? 'So far' is deliberate. The Mayor said almost immediately that he would not raise the charge, even for inflation, for ten years – a real hostage to fortune, in my view. But then he is a bit apt to make extreme statements – the rowing back from 'If it's a disaster after two months, I'll abandon it' was interesting spectator sport, as was the defining of 'disaster'.

A more serious issue of definition is what Capita, the main contractors, have to do to meet their performance targets, and what the penalties for them are if they fail to do so. Their contract with Transport for London is confidential, and neither party will agree to waive the confidentiality. Transparency and accountability are issues of real significance, and this will not be the last major contract that TfL (chaired by the Mayor) should put into the public domain. The Assembly is pursuing the point seriously, as we would whoever was the contractor – but Capita's unfortunate history makes the need to know what performance measures are in place all the more significant. Add to this some of the terms that have come out: for instance that Capita own the copyright in the software for the scheme – just how hard was this negotiated? And the official who, as an employee of TfL, was the principal architect of the scheme is now leaving to advise around the world on congestion charging, with the Mayor telling us that TfL will benefit by sharing in what he earns. Will we ever cut through the confidentiality around the terms of his employment (what restrictive covenants were there to protect TfL when he left? how come TfL shares in his income rather than that he, as reward for his good work, shares in TfL's?) It was Londoners' (actually every taxpayers' – TfL is funded mainly through grant) money that enabled congestion charging to be developed.

And what now? Well, apart from advising a little caution and not jumping to conclusions before the scheme has really bedded down, the Liberal Democrat group has been doing all it can to support alternative means of reducing congestion. Even if the scheme is a long-term success – and don't get us wrong, we do wish it well – congestion remains a serious problem outside the central zone, and by definition you can't make the whole of London subject to the charge, at any rate not while maintaining residents' discounts. There is considerable interest in pilot projects for 'Traffic Smart' which brought a 14 per cent traffic reduction in Perth, Australia. Car owners were given personalised journey plans showing them how to get the best out of public transport alternatives.

Our stance has been to support the scheme while examining it critically. But I can't help wondering if the Mayor is right – could such a bold scheme have been introduced by a traditional council, which would have found it difficult to move from the detail to the decision? Does it take an executive Mayor to say: let's go for it. I hope not – I still don't like having our capital subjected to the personality politics inherent in the mayoral structure.