Congestion Charging

On the perimeter

Residents fear for their streets

Felicity Lawrence
Tuesday February 18, 2003

The Guardian

Rush hour in Kennington, just outside the congestion charge zone, was eerily quiet. The usual tailbacks along the roads where main routes into the City from south London meet had vaporised.

Courtney Coltress, an accountant from Brixton who drives in to central London every day, just had long enough at the lights to complain about the charge before accelerating off into an empty road.

In the pedestrian junction on Kennington Road, a couple of dozen local residents, who fear traffic being diverted into their streets, were doing their best to sound angry for the cameras, which outnumbered them.

Edward Heckles was trying to get the hang of his brass megaphone to rouse passing motorists to honk their opposition to Ken's tax. Several obliged, but there was not quite the volume of traffic to keep up the momentum.

Mr Heckles lives in Southwark and walks to work, but he said it would be impossible for his wife to do the shopping with their five-month-old child. "Of course if you could just walk to your local shops, that would be fantastic, but the traffic will be much heavier on residential roads."

Charles Pender, who works in insurance in the City, had come to protest, briefcase in hand, on his way in.

He was worried about the impact on his wife and two small children, and other young mothers. "The supermarket will be impossible without paying, though actually in our case the Sainsbury's is outside the zone. But if you are going to have a charge it should cover most of London and stop people from outside coming in, not make it harder for those who live here," he said.

Anne and Charles Malpass, a barrister and solicitor in central London, were also doing a brief stint with their plac ards before going into work by public transport as usual. "This is just penalising those on the edge of the congestion zone. We think it's a good idea, but it should be on the north and south circular, not here," Mrs Malpass said.

A good natured exchange took place with the sole counter-protester on the opposite pavement. A week ago it would have been impossible to shout over the roar of traffic, but yesterday Jon Davies was able to heckle Mr Heckles across the bare tarmac with a polite "on yer bike".

"You can't get on your bike with several kilos of shopping," came the reply. But Mr Davies welcomed the charge. He works in the health service and cycles or uses public transport. He also has a car.

"We hardly use it, but if we do, we'll pay. A few weeks ago there was an accident here, a kid got run over. St Thomas's hospital is just down the road, but it took 30 minutes to get an ambulance to him. It couldn't just go on," he said.

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