Beware the hard cases, Mr Mayor

ONE dark winter morning early in 2003, Londoners will find themselves paying 5 to drive into the centre of their city. Cameras will snap drivers as they cross a central London cordon. Anyone who has not paid to drive within the charging zone - and who does not pay by the end of the day - will face an automatic penalty. The real- life reaction of drivers to this new charge (as opposed to polling evidence) is unknown.

London may not be able to build a football stadium or to reconstruct its appalling Tube, but it will be the first of the world's mega-cities to introduce a radical system of road charging. Mayor Ken Livingstone's justification for the new regime is that it will reduce congestion within the central zone by some 15 per cent. It would also - and this effect cannot have escaped Mr Livingstone's attention - raise some 200 million a year for his coffers.

There are good free-market and environmental reasons for adopting congestion charging. Free marketeers can rejoice at the move from rationing (of road space) by queuing to limitation by price. People who are willing to pay for less congested roads will do so. Greens, for their part, can look forward to a reduction in the number of cars on the road, and thus a reduced impact on the environment.

If there are good economic, practical and environmental reasons for congestion charging, why are voices raised in opposition? The Conservatives and a number of inner London boroughs are bitterly critical of the mayor's plans. Some experts question the technical possibilities of introducing an effective scheme. The Standard's letters column has included significant criticism, particularly from people representing some of the "hard cases" that will be thrown up by the imposition of congestion charging.

To counter the criticism that congestion charging will be unfair to some people or enterprises, the mayor proposes to exempt a number of road users from paying the charge. Black cabs, emergency vehicles, the Post Office, the disabled and some London borough vehicles will be 100 per cent exempt.

Residents within the zone will pay just 10 per cent of the full charge.

NEVERTHELESS, the hard cases will start to surface in the weeks and months ahead as we move towards 2003. Here is a sample of the kind of apparent unfairnesses that are bound to provoke a public debate: the parent of a handicapped child who lives just outside the zone, but who drives the child to school just inside the zone each day; the pensioner living just outside the zone, but who drives into the zone each day to provide home-help assistance to a frail friend; the low-paid office cleaner working all night cleaning offices who must move equipment from site to site, and who must either start or finish work within the charging period; the nurse who lives in a part of London badly served by public transport, who works antisocial hours and who must start or finish work within the charging period.

For completeness, imagine the opposite kind of case: the affluent City worker living in Mayfair who drives a company car to an employer- provided parking space in the Square Mile each morning.

The City worker, living and working within the charging zone, would pay just 50p a day, while all the other cases face 5. Of course, these examples are deliberately chosen to show the kind of political difficulties that will be thrown up by congestion charging.

But they are not untypical of the kind of politically awkward problems that so undermined the poll tax. Forget the high principle, it is the practicalities that always cause problems.

There is no doubt congestion charging will also appear regressive to a number of car users: the richer you are, the more easily you will be able to pay. Indeed, 300-an-hour lawyers and consultants will find quicker car and taxi journeys save them thousands of pounds a year. Poorer drivers will be priced off the roads. Also, there is a risk that the streets just outside the charging zone will clog up with cars displaced from the zone itself.

Of course, there will be initiatives to improve public transport so as to make alternatives to the car more appealing. The mayor has promised more day and night buses, though it is certain that nothing can be done to improve the Underground in the short period before the new charge is introduced.

People who can no longer afford to use their cars will either have to squeeze themselves onto the existing overcrowded Tube or, if they are lucky, onto the new, improved, bus services.

TO be convincing, these new bus services will have to be visibly different from most of the infrequent, irregular, slow, tatty services that currently inch their way into the charge zone. There will also have to be new routes to fill in the gaps that exist in the network. Once the mayor and his transport commissioner Bob Kiley take over the Tube, it too will be expected to show that its management has improved.

None of the hard cases outlined above necessarily undermines the case for a congestion charge. They simply make selling it a very difficult job. Getting the buses and Underground to improve will be a Herculean task. All of Ken Livingstone's legendary political charm will be needed to convince the capital's motorists that the congestion charge is a price worth paying.

Tony Travers is head of the London Group at the London School of Economics.

Copyright 2001
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