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Congestion Charging

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Evening Standard

06/06/03 - Opinion section

Well done Ken, now we need some fine tuning

By David Mellor, Former Conservative Cabinet Minister

Bring me lucky generals, said Napoleon, so he'd have loved Ken Livingstone. All of us who thought the introduction of the congestion charge in February was going to be a disaster had not reckoned on a war to divert people's attention elsewhere. Lucky Ken. Lucky too that his obvious manipulation of the traffic flow didn't cost him dear. Rephasing the traffic lights then putting them back again once the charge had started, plus removing all those roadworks that were doing people's heads in was, let's face it, a pretty brazen device. But it worked. Instead of getting angry, Londoners just laughed knowingly and said to themselves, that Ken really is a cheeky chappie, isn't he, or words to that effect not readily reproducible in a family newspaper.

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes, even if it is. I thought the whole system might collapse in the first few days beneath the weight of public opprobrium and chaos at the call centre. It didn't, and the traffic flow into central London is undeniably lighter. Down by maybe 20 per cent Ken himself says, and he's probably not wrong.

Lucky old Ken. I mean for me, who was a minister during the Community Charge fiasco, the ultimate salt in the wound is that the congestion charge is nothing more than a poll tax. The duke and the dustman pay the same. So why have there been no riots this time around?

With luck like that, if Napoleon really had known Ken he would have never met his Waterloo. He would have died in his bed at Fontainebleau at a great old age still running most of Europe, and Ken would have been married off to one of his sisters and become King of England.

But sometimes your luck can run out, and could it happen to Ken? Harold Macmillan, it was, who told us we'd never had it so good. Everybody knows that. Few recall that he went on to say: "But sometimes I wonder, is it too good to last?" And it was. Macmillan went from triumph to ignominious exit in less than four years. Could the same happen to Ken? I reckon it could unless he begins to get real about the downsides of the congestion charge, and does something sensible about them.

Already the clouds no bigger than a man's hand are gathering and I'm not talking about the evidence lurking around waiting for some talented opposition politician to sound off about the number of cars evading the charge because they aren't registered to the person driving.

I'm talking about hard economic evidence that won't go away, all of it faithfully reported in the Standard, from reputable non-political organisations, that the charge is seriously damaging business in central London.

The London Chamber of Commerce recently surveyed 520 businesses in the zone and found three-quarters of them reporting falling takings in the same period when, nationally, consumer spending went up by more than four per cent. One in four of these businesses is thinking of moving out.

The Federation of Small Businesses said last month the charge is hitting small businesses especially hard, and anyone dependent on passing trade has been really badly hit.

Also last month, retail monitor Footfall published the results of a three-month CCTV survey of 13 major stores within the zone, which found the number of shoppers had fallen by up to eight per cent this spring, compared with the year before.

Meanwhile, outside the zone all the neighbouring boroughs from Wandsworth to Camden are reporting an increase in fly parking as commuters out to avoid the charge create their own personal park-andride scheme.

So be warned, Ken, it's not that long a journey from a lucky general to Stan Laurel; another fine mess you've got us into.

And in putting your thinking cap on, you are not much helped by your mates at Transport for London. Instead of getting to grips with what has become a tidal wave of evidence of damage to London's economy, they speak dismissively of " anecdotal assertions", and talk complacently of waiting for their own survey "in the autumn". This isn't so much Napoleon as Marie Antoinette. The businessmen complain, and Transport for London responds: "Let them eat cake."

Ken isn't helping himself either. He's come up with the crazy idea of trying to persuade Westminster Council to cut its parking charges, which were of course imposed to stop too many cars coming into central London! Daft and counter-productive are the two obvious words for that one.

To stop a backlash, Lucky Ken has got to become Clever Ken, and ask himself whether the charge imposes unnecessary misery by running from 8.30am to 6.30pm when the real cause for concern is and always has been the peak times. The period the charge operates from could be amended with no detriment to the grand design. It could come off at 10.30am, and be reimposed at 3.30 or even 4pm. Even better, maybe, would be to let the charge operate only up until, say, 1pm. That would still deter commuters but would not punish occasional shoppers, cinema and gallerygoers and so on.

At a stroke that would offer some alleviation to hardpressed small businesses in the centre, and remove for most of the day an imposition that has merely transferred congestion to areas on the periphery of the scheme. The Federation of Small Businesses study also shows places like Victoria, Nine Elms, Chelsea Bridge, Battersea Bridge, Edgware Road and parts of Kennington are congested for "large parts of the day", when previously they weren't.

Ken must not get as complacent as his advisers. He's got away with it so far. But for most people the jury is still out, and the verdict could yet go the wrong way for him. A successful businessman once described as lucky replied, the funny thing is, the harder I work, the luckier I get.

Time to take a leaf out of his book, Ken. What you established in February is a pretty crude scheme. Start modifying it now while you still retain the initiative rather than have fundamental changes forced upon you when the going gets really tough next year.

Find this story at
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/opinion/articles/5204677?version=1
©2003 Associated New Media

(posted 7600 days ago)

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