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A little late to this one for a variety of reasons, but there were some items of good news included in the final agreement a month ago. The Mayor successfully managed to push back against government plans to extend the congestion charge to the North and South Circular roads. This win has been widely reported, along with the downside of the continued extension of the charge to cover 7-days a week and the increased level of £15 per day.
Not so widely publicised was the fact that the threat to end free bus travel for under 18s and those over 60 but under retirement age has also been withdrawn. Thus zip cards will continue as issued until expiry and the 60+ Oyster card remains valid after 9am.
I think the 10:00 pm end time is quite harsh. As an example, a friend of mine who lives and works outside Central London used to drive in after work to meet up and go to the theatre. His home and his work are not well connected by public transport, and there isn’t realistically enough time to drive home and then get public transport into London. What will obviously happen is driving to the congestion charge boundary and connecting on public transport, which I suppose is £4.80 TfL wouldn’t have seen otherwise. But the inconvenience will also reduce journeys into Central London with the economy being the loser.
If an evening and weekend extension has to happen, it would arguably be prudent to have a peak and off peak rate for the congestion charge. An evening and weekend rate of £5 tallies nicely with the Zone 2-1 return fare they would otherwise see, and people with a choice would probably use public transport to avoid fuel and parking fees on top of that.
I could certainly support the idea of a reduced charge at weekends.
One of the big problems I have with vehicle recognition schemes generally (the Dartford Crossing is the same) is that there doesn’t seem to be a way of telling whether you’ve avoided paying if you entered/exited the zone at about the charge boundary times. For this reason I’m not sure how successful splitting the fee on a weekday might be. I do get the data protection issues, but once logged in to your own account I think they should allow you to see times that your vehicle plates were captured.
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