Firstly when the system was set up it was deliberately awkward – you had to pay by a certain time (I often forgot) and it was often difficult to get through to pay). I have other things to think about in my life – like work family etc and often forgot to pay and then ended up with something like a £80 fine for being 2 days late.

Fortunately in the past year or two they have made the system more reasonable and now you get your credit card charged at the end of each month for any trips you make – this is simpler and more convenient and I am far less against it now.

But the main problem is that a vast majority of the money raised goes to the company doing the policing – can’t remember which one but it will be one of the Government favourites like G4s or Securicor, either way it was the usual politicians typically soft deals to their corporate friend.. Next to no money was raised to put back into public transport. Therefore it was just a punitive tax with no real benefit – it didn’t have that great affect on congestion when compared to lost retail business for London.

Re the referendum – you should have done what Ken Livingston did – hold a referendum for West London and then ignore the result when it didn’t go your way and say it was a consultation and not a referendum – way to go democracy!

I just wish Gov’s could be more creative and positive with their taxation idea and more efficient in spending the revenue.

Sorry but I really do believe that these taxations are short sighted and only limited in their ability to fix problems like congestion. Also additionally there are quite a few people scrapping to make ends meet – they could I guess do with less tax not more.

We need to get back a sense of self worth for people – a desire to live a healthier lifestyle and more self reliance in achieving that – taxation to me creates a more centralised economy and way of thinking in the individual – people look to see what Government can do to help them out of a hole and less on what they can achieve.

People on the forum here are fortunate in that we had the desire and luck to find things
such as cycling and the push to pursue that – be it sport / commute or whatever. A large number of people just turn their nose up at making that commitment and instead want free transport or a cheap car, these are the people who cycled to work in very high numbers in the first half of the 20th Century. Now cycling has in the majority become a middle class thing

It is great to say that the revenue raised from parking charges could be used to fund other transport alternatives – sadly this is never the case, due to inter governmental revenue / expenditure rules and secondly all levels of government would prefer to spend the money elsewhere (where they think they will get the most votes) – sadly you are far too logical in your thought – Governments aren’t – until it becomes a vote winner it, alternative forms of transport will not receive the extra funding it needs.

This is why I have always said cyclists need to get a friend cycling and therefore increase the voting power of the cycling lobby. Others say you will not get those extra cyclist without the infrastructure – it’s all a bit chicken and egg!

Secondly I am morally against punitive taxation – you cannot tax people onto public transport or bikes (well you can but it would need to be pretty harsh taxation and then you will only get the poorer sections of the community onto bikes. Additionally the spending on infrastructure would need to be massive if you want it to really work – most people will use public transport / bike if it is faster and convenient (additionally safe in terms of bikes) – we are a very long way from this currently.

What I feel needs to happen (though I admit it is fairly wishful of me) is to educate people as to why it is better to use a bike in particular – the health both mental and physical, financial (maybe but not for some of us ) and speed. All of this dovetails into your previous post about your time on a cardiac ward – sadly Governments have been devaluing education consistently in order to reap more votes from supposedly better education results – I despair.

Good stuff!

Ian

Drivers assumed they would always drive and have to pay for the privilege following the changes. People with no public transport often didn’t consider they might get some, or might get a better service.

Also, the proposals were dominated by the “negative”, the congestion charge, particularly following an unpleasant campaign by a large local real estate company (Peel Holdings). Even now, your article only refers to the proposals in terms of the charge. Manchester had won 3 billion pounds of government funding (including a £1.15bn loan), and we voted against it. How often do people turn down 3 billion pounds? The condition was that all the improvements had to be in place before any charge could be introduced. The no vote was a tragedy for Manchester and there should never have been a referendum.

In fairness, the proposals unfortunately offered little specifically to cyclists – being created by the public transport executive (now re-branded as TfGM). I know quite a few cyclists who voted against the proposals.