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 bus lanes that were actually built to slow down the traffic (under the wittily named 1998 'traffic calming' legislation).
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<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080407/006500.html>
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Earlier, I asked for the view from London -- the congestion pricing plan mother ship -- and Mr. Heartfield has delivered.
It's important, I think, to point out that James has covered two of Jordan's often repeated concerns.
Specifically:
* The flawed linkage of congestion pricing with mass transit funding
and
* The tendency of such systems to expand in scope and absorb most proceeds.
Later, in reply to Doug's posting of a report from Transport for London touting positive effects (<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080407/006506.html>), James wrote:
As for 'by law all net revenue...' the point is that that is all *NET* revenue, but most of the revenue disappears in administration costs. Then there is the question of what qualifies as investment in improving transport, which mostly means vast payouts to the army of gladhanding 'consultants' sucking on the GLA tit - none of whom has done anything to improve transport.
Livingstone has already admitted that the congestion charge was a failure by changing the rationale for its introduction - to reduce congestion at the time, to penalise motorists afterwards.
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<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080407/006515.html>
Again, this echoes several of Jordan's points, namely, inefficiency of implementation and corruption in the consulting process.
Now of course, everyone knows that James is something of an enthusiast for what many of us would deride as 'sprawl'. Still, these criticisms are serious and, to me at least, have the ring of truth. (About this, I write as a man who's very familiar with how big tech projects go awry -- and don't be deceived, congestion control schemes are, among other things, really big tech projects.)
As I said before, I'm generally in favor of congestion control initiatives but I'm starting to wonder if the plans we're backing are as polished -- or even merely useful for achieving a fraction of their stated objectives -- as we suppose.
Jordan has presented an alternative idea:
<http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080407/006513.html>
Perhaps it's worth exploring.
.d.