London Traffic Management Schemes

The population is currently arouund 8million and over 3.84 million people are employed in london. Of this population, around 1.07million people are thouguht to enter central London on an everage weekday between the hours of 7am and 10am - this is only going up. Having said this, 82% use public transport and this has remained stable for the last decade.

Congestion Charge tackles four ket transport priorities for London:

• Reducing congestion
• Improving Bus services
• Improving journey time reliability for car users
• Making the distribution of goods and services more relaibel, sustainable and efficient

Strengths

• For non-CC registered number plates, all images are encrypted and digitaaly signed at point of capture to prevernt any modification. This ensures there is a complete evidence trail in the event of any disputed penalty charges
• Non-registered drivers get until mignight before Transporrt for London seeks the name and address of the owner from the DVLA's licensing records in Swansea. The penalty charge will be £40 if paid within 14days
• The CCTV and number plate recoginition systems are bespoke, reliable technology and are capable of operating in limited light conditions
• There's a network of CCTV camrea sites at all entry points to the charging zone. Time and date, as well as the images are saved and backed up
• By the start of the scheme in 2003, more than 200 extra buses will be provided on routes into the propsed congestion charging zone
• The cameras capture the number plates of all 250,000 cars passing througgh central London daily. Pictures are checked against the list of registered vehicles, and thse are discarded

Weaknesses

• The camera's automatic database may fial on 10-15% of cars by missing them entirely or capturing a blurred image
• Unlcear pictures will be referred to manual checkers by each checker is expected to examine more than 200 images an hour. Critis contend that they could be swamped.
• Motoring organisations say DVLA has a grossly inaccurate database - and this is what penatly notices are issued against
• Images of number plates belonging to those who have not paid by midnight on the day of travel will then be manually checked against DVLA databases for pentaly notices to by issued

• Congestion in the zone has dropped by arouund 30% - this is towards the upper estimate before hte scheme was implemented
• Congestion is now at its lowest point since the mid-1980's
• THe number of vehilces in the zone during charging hours has dropped by 16%
• 50,000 fewer cars per day are being driven into the charging zone with the majority of these people switching to public transport/bicycles  or car sharing
• People are also diverting around the zone so 4000 fewer peple are entering the zone
• No significant traffic displacment arouund the zone has been observed
• Car journeys to and from the zone are quicker and mroe reliabel - car journey times have been decreased by an average of 14% and reliability has improved by an average of 30%
• Public transporrt is coping well with thein creased number of ex-car users and bus services are benefitting from the reduced congestion
• THere is a suggested 20% reduction in the nuber of accidents in the zone
• Payment methods are working satisfactorily and althouggh net revenue from the scheme is less then acticipation, over £86million will be raised in 2003/4 and £80-100 million in future years for reinvestment in further transporrt improvements