Has London reached the limits of congestion charging?

On Monday, London's congestion zone doubled in size. The idea seems to be that if congestion charging is good (and so far the congestion charge has been a success), then more congestion charging is better. But John Kay explains cogently why that ain't necessarily so.

The western area of Belgravia and Kensington, Bayswater and Notting Hill is mainly residential. More people live than work there and most of the vehicles on its roads are private cars rather than vans and lorries. While most journeys in the east central zone begin outside it, most journeys in the western area begin within it. Most, perhaps all, of the revenues from the western extension will be absorbed in operating costs, since so many travellers pay the discounted residents’ charge. If they drive into the eastern part of the zone, they will begin to recreate the congestion in the commercial areas the earlier plan addressed.

In other words, there are a couple of hundred thousand residents of the new congestion zone who used to be incented not to drive into the old congestion zone, and who now can do so with impunity. Is this really a great idea? I guess we'll find out.

Interesting datapoint, from the Guardian:

The congestion scheme made revenues of £245m and a profit of £122m last year, most of which was invested in buses. This makes a slight dent in the £1.6bn per year running costs for TfL's bus network, which earned £961m from fares last year, leaving the taxpayer to cover a funding gap of just under £600m.
The new extension to the zone is expected to generate profits of up to £40m, but even then it would represent just a fraction of the cost of the bus network and 3% of TfL's total costs.

Posted by Felix at 17:52 EST

Comments

"Incented" ?? oh my... How long have you lived in the US?

Still, mustn't grumble. The main conservative party in Australia once coined the slogan "incentivation". I'm pretty sure that I would be incentivated not to drive by a high congestion charge.

Posted by: tbelcher at 19:03 EST, February 20, 2007

I know it's horribly American, but I actually like "incented" a/o/t "incentivized" or "incentivised". Or "incentivated". Why tack on an unnecessary syllable or two? I'll happily admit that "incented" hasn't been a word for long, but surely at this point everybody knows what it means. But I'll stop here, before this comment becomes too incentiary...

Posted by: Felix at 19:14 EST, February 20, 2007

Why not simply "incent" as the past tense?

Posted by: Richard at 20:22 EST, February 20, 2007