h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

way to go! make the suckers pay!!

Damn straight! With their "I'm not taking the bus! What do you take me for?!" An all zones bus pass costs 2 quid for a day! And if your response to that would have been about how unreliable the busses are, that's probably cos of the congestion what with all the people driving their cars.

The question is why not pay! The congestion fees are nothing really, and the quickest way to get around London is by public transport, you find yourself waiting at traffic lights for hours otherwise.

The congestion fees are nothing?....£1300 a yr is nothing? If driving was going to cause a pay cut that big I would seriously reconsider transport.

Glad I don't live in london

Yeah but parking is so expensive, plus road tax, insurance, etc. It's just another cost to factor in to car ownership - which has always been expensive.

Wish I could pay that little for a travel card into London! It costs me over £8 a day to get here.

Excluding petrol, parking and maintenance it would cost me approx £5.60 a day (if you include having the car to use at weekends) to have a car and drive it into london daily when the congestion charge comes in. Once you add on the other costs it'll be well in excess of your £8 a day (is that including the fact that you could get a season ticket/travel card that is valid at weekends too?).

Only lunatics drive into london for work (IMO...) now, without including the c.c. - I think it is a good thing basically, I just hope the tube/trains can cope with the increased numbers of people.

This wasn't quite the coherent post I was hoping for, but you get the gist

It seems to me that, say, this time last year-ish, all I was hearing is that cars were too expensive in this country (Rip-off Britain, apparently) and that our european friends where enjoying 15% cheaper cars.

So the car companies dropped the prices to compensate, which means that more people can afford to buy, which obviously means more cars on the road and longer traffic jams.

Didn't see that one coming.

But the underlying problem is that no-one wants to be the one to leave the car at home. Everyone is waiting for everyone else to use the bus or train, so they can enjoy the empty roads! Its never going to happen!

I know that it's more expensive in a car - although not by a huge amount, but at least I get a seat in my car. I don't have to put up with someone breathing in my ear, or hanging over me. I don't cancel my car journeys with no warning or explanation. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of public transport, I jsut think that it could be a bit cheaper. I also think that communters season tickets should only cover weekdays to make them cheaper. If I want to travel into London at the weekend I'd happily buy another ticket.

Why are alternate fuel cars (gas, electric etc) exempt from the congestion charge? They take up just as much room on the roads as normal cars, don't they?

Not working in London, I don't know whther this is true or not, but I also heard that there are an unusually large number of roadworks at the moment, and that all the traffic lights have been rephased so that they stay on red longer. Is that a way of artificially increasing congestion to make the charge more palatable, or am I just being cynical?

Alternative fuel cars have 100% reduction on congestion charging as part of a seperate campaign to increase the number of people buying and using them.

The truth behind the traffic light re-phrasing story is that SOME lights were refused after a survey which showed that the green man wasn't even on long enough for someone to get across the road in time, meaning a danger to pedestrians. This may have had some adverse affect on traffic, but most of the complaints are at lights which haven't even been changed, just people have someone to blame for every red light they see now.

There's a good case for making congestion worse though, in order to increase usage of public transport. If you widen motorways, more people will use them. If you cone off lanes of motorways, then less people will use them. No government would be brave enough to do it, but that would be a good tactic.

They did that on the M4 - creating the bus-only lane. There was a massive outcry (particularly when rev Tony was snapped sailing down the bus lane past the endless jam in the remaining 2 lanes in his misiterial car).

Not sure if it is still there after all the protests.

More people on public transport is fine until you try to get on a north-bound northern line tube from south london after about 7.45am.