Tuesday 18th February 2003
Decongestant
I’ve only one complaint about the new congestion charge introduced yesterday - I had to sit waiting for over twenty minutes for my nine o’clock lecture. That’s because there was no traffic on the roads, and the bus journeys were both considerably quicker than normal. I don’t even get within a mile of the congestion charge zone - it was even all the approach roads that were empty, which wasn’t what was predicted. And I got a seat on both buses; and the central line still isn’t running (and runs a few feet down along the route). So I don’t quite understand what was going on, despite it supposedly being a ‘holiday’ today, but I’ll still complain about the missed sleep opportunity.
Still, one swallow does not a summer make (yet one hot weekend is all we get for a summer, but I’m digressing). I’ll wait and see what happens tomorrow, and the next day, and next week, and later in the year, and so on until the conservatives give up the ghost and accept that it’s a good idea. However, I think that it could be improved - increase the charge to forty pounds per day, make more zones (not just a bigger one - intra-zone charging wouldn’t work, so let’s get plenty of zones to inter-zone charge), make all bus lanes 24/7, and increase the fine for parking in bus lanes from £80 to your life. Mwa ha ha ha ha. That’ll teach them.