Congestion Charging starts in London on Monday. It is the most ambitious congestion charging scheme in a capital city in Europe. I cannot wait
I work in central London, at the junction between Kingsway and High Holborn. I cross that junction as a pedestrian every day. It is a box junction. I know rule 150 of the UK Highway code. I understand that a box junction means that you do not cross until your way is clear if you are a vehicle. Every day I weave my way around cars, taxis and motorcycles, who ignore the fact that I have the green man and the right of way, and the fact that they crossed the box junction when they could not proceed any further. I have been shouted at, and I have been nearly run over. Repeatedly.
I have some predictions about how the London Evening Standard will respond to the introduction of the charge over the next couple of weeks.
Firstly I expect that the headline of their paper on Monday 17th will include the word 'chaos' - and that any transport problems that day will be attributed to the Congestion Charge, although the physical effect of its implementation is limited to taking photographs
I also expect the London Evening Standard to run the following stories within a month of the launch of the London Congestion charge:
...and of course none of these things ever happened to anyone dealing with motoring officialdom before, and no bureaucratic process ever went wrong until congestion charging was introduced
I also predict the Evening Standard will champion a poorly paid worker whose shift is so long that they were caught for the charge before 6:30pm one evening, and again before 7am the next day, without launching a London Evening Standard campaign against poor pay or long shifts, or accepting that the minimum wage did not cause the collapse of society as we know it.
Steve Norris sums up everything that I think is good about the London Congestion Charging scheme:
"It is hard to see any other local authority committing collective suicide by apeing the London experience"
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2752211.stm
My translation: It is hard to see anyone other than a politician independent of party machinery attempting something electorally unpopular with the car-owning middle classes. And I've pre-judged the outcome of this.
Additionally, there has been much talk about this elsewhere in relation to the anti-war demo, but credit to BBC News for also asking for submissions from the public of digital images on the congestion charge issue - at yourpics@bbc.co.uk
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About Martin Belam
I'm a London-based internet consultant and writer, with 8 years experience in product management, information architecture, and user experience design for global brands like Sony, Vodafone, The Guardian and the BBC. I specialise in advising on search, widgets, RSS, online news publishing and bulk email delivery.
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5 comments so far
To Steve Boggan Please contact me in relation to an article you did last year, on Ian brady. If your freelance or not even a Hack, its even more important. Barri.
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no comment need a favour please im an student and i need some information on congestion charge basically i need an diagram of how it works
how does the information flows
thank you
I'm also a student and would like some information on congestion charges. Diagram if possible.
I would also need to know how they get charged. A information flow diagram would be great.