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'Bigger C-charge zone has made traffic worse'
David Williams, Evening Standard25.09.07
Traffic flow around the edge of the congestion charge zone has worsened since the western extension was launched, a snapshot survey suggests today.
The extension - launched in February - has altered traffic patterns, directing more vehicles around the boundary, say London Assembly Conservatives.
Assembly member Bob Blackman - whose Brent & Harrow constituency borders the extension - said more than six in 10 respondents to the survey of 344 people believed traffic in their road had increased.
Six in 10 respondents living on the boundary said they needed to drive into the zone to visit doctors, dentists or hospital.
Nearly nine in 10 of these said they would have "great difficulty" travelling to an alternative outside the zone.
The Conservatives also said a Transport for London report showed pollution had increased in the zone. But TfL said the Tories had misunderstood its study, adding: "TfL carries out research based on real traffic levels, not subjective perceptions."
Reader views (3)
Cloudesley Place N1, since the introduction / expansion of the congestion charge has become the biggest rat-run in Islington. Traffic trying to avoid the charge by cutting accross north London through Cloudesley Place, much of it from Essex and West London, travelling east or west. All day long backed-up traffic all the way down to Copenhagen Street has increased considerbly causing excessive pollution and noise. This excessive pollution and noise is also from large trucks from the Kings Cross development and business design centre, also from concrete mixers, coaches, community transport buses, fire engines, taxis and police cars, some going the wrong way up this one way street, sometimes on the pavement. Causing obvious danger to anyone who is unaware of what is outside the street door. Cloudesley Place is an urban street, housing mainly families and several disabled people (whom I know personally live here). Cloudesley Place is not an urban motorway / rat run for getting across north London without paying the congestion charge.
Which as a chronic asthmatic means every morning and evening I have to take my inhalers due to the build-up of fumes.
What do you think we should do to put things right? Close Cloudesley Place and pedestrianise it, with planters and trees along the centre of the road.
I have complained to Islington council Senior Traffic Engineer,Green Transport Officer and TFL but they have offered with no positive solutions, just a lot of poor excuses.
- Andrew, Islington, London
I used to drive through Chelsea to get to the A4 because it wasn't congested, now brilliantly I have to drive along the Embankment and through Earls Court which are congested. My 20 to 30 minute drive now takes at least 40 minutes to an hour in the previously quiet middle of the day. I refuse to pay an £8 tax for spending less than 10 minutes in the charging zone, so I sit in traffic wasting fuel and pumping out the dreaded "carbon" for twice as long as I used to. Reason for driving, my shift finishes at 11pm to midnight. Drive home at that time in 20 minutes.
- David, London, England
The inability of many Londoners to contemplate not using their cars is pathetic. Public transport is excellent in Brent and Harrow, and from there into central London. There's no doctor, dentist or hospital that cannot be reached pretty easily by public transport (or if you're too poorly, by cab, since there's no point in paying parking charges; or if you're registered disabled then neither the charge nor the parking is an issue). The whole point of the congestion charge/zone is to stop lazy, polluting people getting into their cars. A bit of walking and a bus journey won't do them any harm. And they'll get there a lot quicker because there won't be cars jamming up the road. Simple really.
- Fawcett, London, UK
