UK: Is The London Congestion Charge Working? |
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File under Travel Ecology Statistics
Author: Mike Werner
Location: Normandy, France
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Back in 2003 London introduced a congestion charge for any car that wanted to travel into London. Monday to Friday between 07:00 and 18:00. The charge is £10 (about US$16) per day. The money is to be used to enhance the public transport system, and relive the traffic logged city from cars.
There was a lot of criticism, saying it would never work. But this graph below from the ITO World show the change. The red zones is where that was an increase of traffic, the blue zones where there was a decrease. I guess the red zones can be explained that it's commuter traffic heading for the train stations, and from there into the inner city by train or underground.
There was an increase in bicycle and bus usage, which is fairly obvious. But motorcycles are exempt; they don't need to pay the congestion charges. I can't find any figures on how many people decided to buy a motorcycle or scooter, but I guess it's quite high.
So it looks like the congestion charge does keep cars out of the city, but motorcycles, thankfully, keep going in.
Via: Treehugger
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