CONGESTION CHARGING SCHEME IN UK

Congestion Charging Scheme in UK

Congestion Charging Scheme in UK

Introduction

My investigation is based on the Congestion Charge placed in London on the 17 February 2003. I aim investigating how successful the Congestion Charge has been since is was placed in 2003, and to see the effects the charge has had on the environment, the traffic in London and the views of the people of London. In order to see the effects of the Congestion Charge, and whether it has been a success, I first need to investigation the motive about why the Congestion Charge was set up.



Why a charging Scheme was needed?

There are many different views why the Major of London decided that the Congestion Charge was needed in Central London.

One of the many reason that a charging scheme was introduced was because London suffers the worst traffic congestion in the UK and amongst the worst in Europe. From the table below you can see that London has by the majority of road users, either on motorways or major roads in built and non-built up areas. This is a major concern as London is by far the smallest Region but with the most dense vehicle use. Every weekday morning, the equivalent of 25 busy motorway lanes of traffic tries to enter central London.

(www.statistics.gov.uk)

Another concern was the fact that Congestion was charging London approximately £2-4 million each week due to lose time. In a month, it costs London on average £12 million, in a year it costs on average £144 million.

Another increasing concern was that London had the most traffic flow in Great Britain, but the least number of roads, as you can see from the table below. On average, there is only 71 kilometres of motorway in London, whereas in the South east which has the second highest traffic flow there is 656 kilometres of Motorway, a dramatic 90% increase. Also London only has 14,415 kilometres in total of all roads; the South East has over 4 times as much, but still comes second to London on the amount of traffic on the roads. (www.statistics.gov.uk)

It could also be that the amount of causalities in London was a concern and a cause for the charging scheme. As from the graph below, London had the most child “killed or seriously injured “causalities in Britain in 2001.

In 2001, London had 6,597 reported child accidents in just one year. This figure had been the largest ever reported and was expected to rise even more by 2007 if nothing was done to prevent traffic.

Another reason for the need of a charging scheme is that drivers spent up to 48% of their time crawling in jammed traffic. As you can see from the table below, London has the far greater mean time for time taken to travel to work. On average it takes 42 minutes to get to work or a destination, if u calculate the average number of cars and the length of roads in Greater ...