Has Sadiq gone completely bonkers??

[GroundAlmonds]

How exactly does this make sense?

He wants non-Londoners (drivers) to pay a charge to enter Greater London, because...oh it’s complicated. I’ll link.

He does realise that Londoners drive out of London to wear out non-London roads too, though, right? It’s literally two way traffic.

I suppose he could be satirising the Brexit negotiations?

Huh? So extending the Zones then!

Or just that £3.50 to go anywhere?

Either way I am grateful that I still don't need to go to London, ever, on any manner of transport!

Is it about protecting the roads, or about reducing congestion by giving people an incentive to travel into London some other way?

I cannot wait to vote in the next mayoral elections for absolutely anyone but him.

Push people onto the trains so that they're more likely to pass on viruses and disperse them once they arrive in London?

Frankly I'd much rather visit my elderly mother in a SW London suburb by public transport but even pre-Covid it was never practical in terms of time. No way I'd do it now. I'm in her bubble and I need to see her, but as safely as I can.

Is there a link?

I previously lived north of London in home counties. The congestion charge ensured I never took a private vehicle in. The furthest I would drive towards the city would be the IKEA in Edmonton just inside the North Circular. Any further in and it was the train.

Ergo, congestion charge achieved its aim where I was concerned.

He does realise that Londoners drive out of London to wear out non-London roads too, though, right? It’s literally two way traffic.

But Londoners drive out of London in all directions - Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, and further afield. No one place gets all the wear and tear and congestion and pollution, it's dispersed over a wide area. But people from all those counties drive into London. And the number of vehicles entering London each day from outside is much greater than the number of London vehicles driving out of London each day. Commuting is pretty much one way traffic.

Well if 1.3 million vehicles enter London every weekday, then the charge could do well to dissuade these journeys from being made. I don't believe they all need to be made, or couldn't be replaced by public transport.

Children are quite literally dying from the effects of air pollution, and I am in favour of quite strict measures to prevent this.

We also need to increase our reliance on public transport, and a charge which secures the future of buses, the tube and trams would help us achieve it.

If you don't like it... don't drive.

True, but then the £500m in Vehicle Excise Duty that Londoners pay a year goes to repairing those roads, and none to London (decided during the May era) - TFL has to fund that. May/Hammond also cut TFL's grant funding by £700m.

Fares make up around 50% of TFL's income, and have more than halved this year.

Sorry forgot the link.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/11/khan-considering-350-daily-charge-for-drivers-entering-london

I had to google to find out what you were talking about. Apparently he wants to charge people £3.50 a day to come into London. Presumably this is instead of charging everyone driving inside the North/South circular £15 a day, so it sounds like a relatively modest proposal to me.

He needs to raise vast amounts to pay for public transport, as their finances have been devastated by COVID. Raising it from cars in the area covered by public transport seems like a good idea.

His proposal for charging people to drive in means that people who live in London who might want to drive short distance near their home still can, without paying.

Of course I may be wrong and the £3.50 is on top of an expanded congestion charge, so it's really £18.50...

For more than a decade I paid the congestion charge 5 days a week so I could drive to work. £3.50 sounds like bugger-all to me.

Children are quite literally dying from the effects of air pollution, and I am in favour of quite strict measures to prevent this. £3.50 a day won't do this. This is only going to produce more money!

There needs to be more done, maybe following Cambridge example. There are plenty of small towns out here in NotLondon that have restricted driving times, varying no car policies.

But Londoners drive out of London in all directions - Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, and further afield. No one place gets all the wear and tear and congestion and pollution, it's dispersed over a wide area.

It’s a bottomless argument, though isn’t it?

London doesn’t produce much food or energy it water. England-minus-London does those things. Are we really going to have the capital constantly in a tit-for-tat with the rest of the country?

He's being screwed by the Tories. They are playing games with the funding and are appalling. TFL has lost billions because of Covid and they have to do something to stop it falling apart.
Pollution is killing people. They need to stop driving.

The alternative is letting TfL go bust, which would be devastating, both for the 9m people who live here and for the millions who visit every year. It’s painful, but covid has devastated public finances, and we need public services to survive into next year - there’s no recovery without them. That’s going to mean paying for things we previously took for granted.

@SaskiaRembrandt

Is it about protecting the roads, or about reducing congestion by giving people an incentive to travel into London some other way?

This. If driving is free you just get congestion.

Perhaps I am particularly hostile to all of this as I’m a Londoner. I have a huge London family. I lived there for forty years, but now live just outside and I’m not very keen on being classified a non-Londoner and charged to visit my home turf.

I live in Essex, where I live most people are originally from London but have been priced out, they still have elderly relatives etc there, most work in London and would love to be able to live there. This was the train last week , if they want people to use the trains they need to be more reliable, more frequent and have more than 4/5 carriages per train as they have now, it's also extortionately expensive, I can often visit a friend in York for not much more than a day return to a London terminal from my commuter town, £3.50 won't make that difference, the people paying it will be tradesman, delivery companies, shift workers who can't use public transport. He's worse than bloody Ken Livingstone, I know a lot of die hard labor supporters who voted for Boris in the mayoral elections with gritted teeth, because Red Ken was killing industries around London with his charges. London will only be for the rich (even more so than it is now)

£3.50 a day won't do this. This is only going to produce more money!

He's doing this to raise money. Government told him they wouldn't give London enough money to keep the tubes and buses running, and wanted him to raise funds by extending the congestion charge to cover most of London. (Area inside North and South Circular.) What he's proposing is much less severe than what the government wanted him to do. (Apparently he's seen off that proposal.)

@Goslowlysideways

He's being screwed by the Tories. They are playing games with the funding and are appalling. TFL has lost billions because of Covid and they have to do something to stop it falling apart. Pollution is killing people. They need to stop driving.

Yes that makes sense. The funding bit. The politicking.

It’s probably unfair of me but I dislike politicians who play to the gallery. I did vote for Sadiq and I feel irritated by him now.

On a side note; Some of us will always need to drive and I wish they would have the consideration to routinely promise disability exceptions or discounts when they announce this endless string of road-related policy-proposals.

I live in the C Charge zone and we now have the C Charge basically 24/7 (it stops at 10pm I think so you can come in after then if you want although there's nowhere to go...) Which means my family can't come by to visit me in the car (parents would struggle with PT) and tradespeople don't want to come and I can't do silly things like sell something on Ebay with buyer collection.

If I move to another property within the zone I won't be eligible for a residents' discount as they are now issuing no more residents' discounts so it will cost me £15 per day wherever I am going, Monday - Sunday. I'm not sure how anyone is going to buy a house here under those conditions.

He's making a bad situation a great deal worse. Flexible working patterns and high costs are causing people and businesses to move out of London in ever increasing numbers. Couple that with government commitment to maintain the red wall by promoting and relocate entire departments to the north and you have the perfect storm. Also if commuter numbers decline then the pressure to transfer transport subsidies to the developing areas north of Watford will grow. He needs to promote London , not hammer down the coffin lid with an ever bigger hammer.

@KarlKennedysDurianFruit

I live in Essex, where I live most people are originally from London but have been priced out, they still have elderly relatives etc there, most work in London and would love to be able to live there. This was the train last week , if they want people to use the trains they need to be more reliable, more frequent and have more than 4/5 carriages per train as they have now, it's also extortionately expensive, I can often visit a friend in York for not much more than a day return to a London terminal from my commuter town, £3.50 won't make that difference, the people paying it will be tradesman, delivery companies, shift workers who can't use public transport. He's worse than bloody Ken Livingstone, I know a lot of die hard labor supporters who voted for Boris in the mayoral elections with gritted teeth, because Red Ken was killing industries around London with his charges. London will only be for the rich (even more so than it is now)

Absolutely!

I don't get the problem. London has functing widespread public transport.

fuctioning*