(1888PressRelease)
February 26, 2007 - Motorists entering a large area incorporating Bayswater, Notting Hill, north and south Kensington, High Street Kensington, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Belgravia and Pimlico will now be liable for the £8 a day charge.
People living within the new expanded zone, as well as select postcodes on the western edge of the zone, will be eligible for a 90 per cent residents' discount, paying as little as £4 a week.
To compensate for the enlarged zone, the hours of operation have been reduced by 30 minutes, with motorists now charged for driving between 07:00 and 18:00, rather than 18:30. It is also possible to cross the route without paying, as long as motorists stick to Park Lane or the A40 Westway. As with the previous zone, it is possible to circumvent the area on non-chargeable roads.
However, Mayor Ken Livingstone has been forced to concede that expanding the zone risks increasing the volume of traffic in central London; with a large number of affluent west Londoners now eligible for a resident's discount it is expected that many will take the opportunity to drive right into the centre of town.
In a bid to prevent 'Chelsea tractors' flooding the West End, Mr Livingstone this week announced that the planned hike in the congestion charge for high-emissions vehicles will be brought forward two years. From 2008 anyone with a car liable for car tax band G will be charged £25 a day to drive in central London. Drivers of 4x4s will also not be eligible for a residents' discount.
Up to 18 per cent of drivers will be affected by the hike, which will see 4x4 drivers paying up to £6,000 a year to drive into central London. The mayor of London said he hoped this would encourage people to "take the opportunity to switch to public transport", the Times reports.
The concession from Transport for London that traffic levels will probably rise by four to five per cent in the existing zone came as new figures reveal that congestion in London is only slightly less than it was before the introduction of the C-charge.
Vehicle numbers within the congestion charge zone have fallen by 20 per cent but across London as a whole congestion has barely improved since 2003, when the C-charge came into force. Traffic dropped instantly by 30 per cent after its introduction but has climbed steadily since, with congestion now only eight per cent below 2003 levels.
However, Mr Livingstone blamed roadworks, including the "extremely chaotic" planning policies of utility companies such as Thames Water, for the problem. He claimed that without the congestion charge "central London would almost certainly have ground to a halt by now", the Times reports.
Speaking at a City Hall briefing on Tuesday, the mayor said: "You have to work out where we would be if we hadn't introduced the charge," the Camden New Journal reports. The eight per cent traffic reduction in the existing charge zone is "the difference between central London moving and gridlock", he added.
However, Edmund King, director of the RAC Foundation, claimed that Mr Livingstone has failed to take into account that congestion is partly self-regulating, with a proportion naturally choosing not to drive when delays reach a certain level.
Mr King told the Times: "Traffic speeds wouldn't be much different without congestion charging because drivers would switch if delays got too long."
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