It's Not Rocket Science

Everyone accepts that the introduction of the congestion charge was a brave political decision and has been successful. However, there are a couple of major issues:

Firstly, why is it called the congestion charge? That may have been the original intention, but surely having exemptions for low emission vehicles does nothing to reduce the volume of cars coming into London. Everyone will agree that lowering pollution is a noble and agreeable cause, but the thinking has a flaw. This is specially the case with the newly introduced charges, which are based on the CO2 output of vehicles. Common sense and basic arithmetic says that a car that has an output of x g/km of CO2 that travels a tenth of the distance of another car that has half the output of CO2 / km will emit far less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But in that example, the car that causes less total pollution will get charged significantly more. This isn’t rocket science!

Secondly, what’s with the draconian system of fines? If a charge isn’t paid by midnight on the same day as incurring it, the bill starts to grow (albeit by a mere 25%!!!!). Within a couple of days, it starts to escalate out of control. Everyone will agree that ensuring payment is only fair and reasonable, but this is ridiculous. It’s operating as if a motorist has committed a major sin by driving into London and should be soundly punished if they don’t comply with the silly timings! Why on earth isn’t it possible to have a simple means of setting up an account online or a over the telephone which is pre-paid and automatically debited? Alternatively, why not use a simple direct debit mechanism? Both routes would be cheaper to administer and far less intrusive.