[lbo-talk] NYblocks mayor's congestion plan

[James Heartfield]

Of course, I should say that living in the original congestion charge city, London, that every one knows it is a crock of shit. The city is no less congested (speaking as a London cyclist for the last 20 years). The only change is that the Mayor takes eight pounds a day of anyone driving in central London raising revenue to finance... what? The technology and bureaucracy of collecting the congestion charge. There is no investment in roads (whose potholes are currently on a thirty year waiting list for repair) apart from the introduction of speed bumps, chicanes, cycle and buslanes that were actually built to slow down the traffic (under the wittily named 1998 'traffic calming' legislation).

The presupposition of all of this legislation is that Londoners should not want to move around, but be pinned down as much as possible, and punished for the presumption that they should want to go anywhere not approved by our Social Engineering mayor.

(One of his sidelines was a four year long study to prove that 4x4 drivers caused more accidents - a common assertion from anti-roads protestors. The study concluded earlier this year with the surprise results that, to the contrary, 4x4 drivers were involved in less accidents on the average. These conclusions did not feature in any of the Greater London Authority's literature, and were barely reported.)