Policy madness. Don't want you to use public transport due to the social distancing but then massively stop you from using your car which is THE safest way of not catching CV19.
And they say it's about air quality & not about the money. Bollox.
Actually, they say it’s about both. The money part because of the conditions imposed by central Government for the bailout required.
Slightly related, Dartford Tunnel and my ultimate computer says no moment......
I have an account, about £25 in it, received an email to say it wold be closed unless I either make a crossing or top up (minimum £10) as I hadn't used it for nearly 12 months. I rang them to say it's ridiculous, why would I top up £10 when i've got £25 in there, just got thats what the computer says.
So closed my account, received (very quickly actually) the £25. On the same day as closing I opened a new account (same email address!) and paid in the minimum £10...... so in effect they could have just sent me back £15 and saved everyone the hassle.
Noticed whilst riding last week that they haven’t changed all the signage, still says Mon-Fri 7-7(or whatever it was), surely the first few people caught will have some fun with that???
Noticed whilst riding last week that they haven’t changed all the signage, still says Mon-Fri 7-7(or whatever it was), surely the first few people caught will have some fun with that???
Aah the above was referencing NE London last Friday but I noticed in NW London today that the signs are having stickers stuck over the times/days on them to correct them....
I work nights in the city and it will cost me a extra £240pm
I start work at 20:45
Yes mate. Me too. It's a f***** joke. Congestion in the city of London at weekends is largely non existent. They may as well just call it the 'screw you charge'
Policy madness. Don't want you to use public transport due to the social distancing but then massively stop you from using your car which is THE safest way of not catching CV19.
And they say it's about air quality & not about the money. Bollox.
Oh yeah. The great air quality fallacy.
Tell that to the thousands that reside on the border of the congestion charge who, judging by what I've just seen, are about to see pollution levels blown out of the park by the amount of cars that are now trying to avoid going into the city and are trying to go around it!
Still. Got to pay Sidiq/Tory £1.6billion mismanagement black hole somehow.
Only in this country would any government 'float' charging People more money to go and earn money when many people have spent the last few months earning next to no money.
If the centre of London is anything to go by, this really would be the last nail in the capitals coffin.
Pretty ironic seeing as Boris got to be mayor by removing the affluent parts of West London from the congestion charge and now he's forcing it onto the poorer parts of London.
Pretty ironic seeing as Boris got to be mayor by removing the affluent parts of West London from the congestion charge and now he's forcing it onto the poorer parts of London.
There’s no irony at all TCO knows that enough gullible berks voted for Boris as mayor a decade or so ago. They know SK is getting pelters for the ConCharge and fares increases imposed on TFL by the tories this year. it’s pure simplistic political chicuntery with added profiteering when this is imposed the incumbent mayor will get the blame london usually elects Labour mayor Tories shifted the ConCharge boundaries before purely for votes If there’s another tory mayor they’ll do it again they believe the electorate is stupid enough to fall for it again the timing of this ‘leak’ exposes precisely TCO’s low opinion of the electorate Page 1 Scummings’s playbook And their friends/paymasters get the contract for collecting and pursuing the charges Full disclosure: road pricing for fossil fuelled personal transport is ecologically imperative just sociologically unpalatable The accelerated migration away from the cities will mitigate this as an issue within a decade
Is the infrastructure in place to monitor the movement of traffic entering the area inside the NC/SC? there must be a thousand or so roads to monitor, installing cameras etc will not be done overnight and how much will that cost. I know the low emissions zone was to be extended to the area inside NC/SC, but have seen little evidence of any monitoring devices being put in place. I also think that SK/TFL are scaremongering with free travel passes as these are paid for by the local councils. He could impose time restrictions when a pass could be used.
The CC was introduced to remove congestion in London - the avg speed now is about 7mph, not much change there. The expanded CC zone was introduced to further improve traffic flow - hasn't worked. The ULEZ was introduced to improve air quality - not much change there. The expanded ULEZ will be introduced to further improve air quality - I wonder what will happen ?
It's not Cummings, this is right out of the Blair/Brown stealth tax handbook - make the punters pay again for the things they have already paid for.
After paying for public transport in London since I was 5 (yes, kids did pay before), now over 60, I am going to be asked to pay again.
In fairness to the Mayor though, public transport in London has been too cheap for many years (IMO). Folk are taking 2 bus journeys for £1.70, whilst drinking a coffee they paid £3 for.
I wonder if the "zones" system could be replaced with a more direct "miles traveled" pricing structure, where the journey price reduced as you accumulated more miles traveled over the day/week/month/year ? - just a thought.
Transport for London (TfL) has secured a last-minute extension of its bailout to keep services running for two weeks.
The government will continue the terms of the current £1.6bn bailout package, until 31 October - roughly equivalent to £113m.
The original bailout was due to run out on Saturday.
The mayor's office claimed the government was asking for the £15 congestion charge to the North and South Circular.
A spokesperson added "taking free travel away from children and older people" was a red line for the mayor.
City Hall had complained of punitive conditions attached to the first grant at the last minute, including extra borrowing, slashing free travel for older people and under 18s and raising fares next year.
Extending the Congestion Charge to include both the North & South Circulars is bonkers. I can (sort of) understand charging vehicles to go into Central London, where there is a great tube & bus network & lots of people going in are commuters. But lots of traffic on the roads outside of that are people going about their daily business & parents doing school runs etc. No way they should be charged £15 everytime they use the South Circular for example.
Extending the Congestion Charge to include both the North & South Circulars is bonkers. I can (sort of) understand charging vehicles to go into Central London, where there is a great tube & bus network & lots of people going in are commuters. But lots of traffic on the roads outside of that are people going about their daily business & parents doing school runs etc. No way they should be charged £15 everytime they use the South Circular for example.
Absolutely bonkers. The way things stand, If my partner wants to go and visit her younger sister who lives in Eltham just outside of the zone, she’ll pay nothing. If she wants to visit her elderly sister in Kidbrooke, just inside of the zone, she pays £15 for the privilege.
As another example, Charlton Park RFC is just inside the zone in Kidbrooke, most of the players come from a Kent postcode. They ain’t gonna pay £45 a week to play and train when they’re amateurs.
Definitely needs a rethink otherwise they’ll be riots
Extending the Congestion Charge to include both the North & South Circulars is bonkers. I can (sort of) understand charging vehicles to go into Central London, where there is a great tube & bus network & lots of people going in are commuters. But lots of traffic on the roads outside of that are people going about their daily business & parents doing school runs etc. No way they should be charged £15 everytime they use the South Circular for example.
If as proposed the congestion charge is extended there will inevitably be a backlash to this act of vindictiveness. The Government seems intent on punishing cities run by a Labour mayor whilst ignoring the economic impact. We are run by idiots.
I'd like to know how much TFL have scraped back in fines from those who have entered bank junction in the past few months.
The new social distance pavement measures have made it almost impossible to avoid bank junction when travelling through the city. That's a £65/130 fine for any car between 7am to 7pm.
Boris Johnson’s lie about Sadiq Khan is revealing in more ways than one
If either the Prime Minister or the Tory mayoral candidate had a way to help London deal with Covid-19, they would surely have shared it.
What should we make of Boris Johnson’s lie that Sadiq Khan bankrupted Transport for London? The first, and in many ways most important, thing is that it again shows that the press struggles to cover out-and-out lies from politicians. Johnson’s claim is not “disputed”, it is not “arguable”: it is as false as if I were to claim that today in PMQs, Johnson pulled down his trousers, announced, “I’m going to do to the coronavirus what I’m doing to this despatch box” before proceeding to rub himself against it.
Transport for London (TfL) has a day-to-day operating deficit, but one that it has successfully closed year-on-year for the past five years. Its financial reserves also grew in that time. TfL has faced three hits to its budget in the past decade. Two of them can be blamed on decisions made by London mayors. The first concerns the loss of its operating grant in 2017-18, which makes TfL one of the only major public transport networks in Europe to be funded day-to-day solely by fares and local government – a decision rubber-stamped by Johnson. It is uncontroversial to say this is the fault of the Prime Minister.
The second is Khan’s decision to freeze transport fares (from 2016 to 2020). Since, without the direct grant the mayor of London only has two funding levers directly available to him – increasing fares and raising the mayoral council tax precept, which is capped by central government – it was very foolish of him to bind his hands.
Then there’s the delay in the construction of Crossrail, which could be due to bad decisions made by Johnson at the start of the project, bad decisions made by Khan during its middle period, or simply bad luck.
More worrying is the trend you can’t blame anyone for, other than perhaps Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee, who brought us the iPhone and the World Wide Web respectively: the decline in passenger numbers on London transport. The biggest single driver of this is the easy availability of ride-hailing apps, from Uber to Lyft to FreeNow to Addison Lee. This change in how Londoners travel has serious implications for transport policy not only in London, but in the United Kingdom and across the world.
But the impact of all of these doesn’t change that the story of the past five years – covering Johnson’s final year in the mayoral office and Khan’s first term – is one in which the operating deficit has closed, not widened. It is simply untrue to say that Khan “bankrupted” TfL. The transport body’s economic problems, like those of the country as a whole, cannot be separated from the novel coronavirus and its economic consequences.
Johnson’s lie reveals two interesting trends in politics, in addition to the media problem. The first is that British politics has not yet come to terms with devolution. The argument Johnson should be making about TfL is that decisions taken by him and Khan put the body in good shape going into the crisis, because fundamentally Khan’s record is his record. He should be appropriating Khan’s successes, not creating a fictional record of failure.
The second is that Johnson has no clue how to fix the huge, coronavirus-shaped problem in London’s economy, which may not be resolved for a very long time, if at all. Neither, for that matter, does Shaun Bailey, the Conservative London mayoral candidate for 2021. If they did, then they would have a serious, fact-based dividing line to draw with Khan, who has also yet to set out a vision to navigate London through the changed world. But they have nothing of substance to add, so they instead tell lies that Londoners simply do not believe.
Electorally, that doesn’t matter, because the Conservatives are not going to win the London mayoralty and their path to Downing Street no longer runs through the capital. But the health of the economy is important to the Conservatives' electoral success – and that no Conservative appears to have a plan to revive what Johnson himself once rightly described as the “engine room” of the British economy will have big economic consequences for us all, and may have political ones for the Tories as well.
Maybe if Sadiq had spent less money on shit like all of these cycle lanes then TFL would have more £££'s
Maybe if there wasn't a global pandemic on then tfl would have more £££s
Agreed, but seeing as they are currently spunking £££'s installing cycle lanes all through Lewisham & Catford at the moment seems a but stupid. Maybe, during this pandemic they could have saved those £££'s by not undertaking this project?
Did I also see the zone will be extended as far as Clapham, Woolwich and Catford? Following the south circular
The ULEZ is being extended to the north and south circulars next year
The government is threatening TfL, that to get a financial bailout the congestion charge zone should also to be extended to the north and south circulars. To me that would be political suicide for the Tories in London. South and Southwest London actually get off quite lightly as the A205 is such a weirdly shaped (and useless) road. but vast amounts of North London would be caught by this.
I'd like to know how much TFL have scraped back in fines from those who have entered bank junction in the past few months.
The new social distance pavement measures have made it almost impossible to avoid bank junction when travelling through the city. That's a £65/130 fine for any car between 7am to 7pm.
Funny that.
Add the new bishopsgate bus gate to that too. Mon - Fri 7-7.
I suppose all them fines will help pay the 500 odd staff on 150k salaries inc them million pound goodbye golden handshakes.
They are going after Khan because they told people to work from home, not use the transport, and diminish TFL income. So it is his doing???!!! All the racists will fall for that line.
Comments
I have an account, about £25 in it, received an email to say it wold be closed unless I either make a crossing or top up (minimum £10) as I hadn't used it for nearly 12 months. I rang them to say it's ridiculous, why would I top up £10 when i've got £25 in there, just got thats what the computer says.
So closed my account, received (very quickly actually) the £25. On the same day as closing I opened a new account (same email address!) and paid in the minimum £10...... so in effect they could have just sent me back £15 and saved everyone the hassle.
Bonkers sometimes.
Oh yeah. The great air quality fallacy.
Tell that to the thousands that reside on the border of the congestion charge who, judging by what I've just seen, are about to see pollution levels blown out of the park by the amount of cars that are now trying to avoid going into the city and are trying to go around it!
Still. Got to pay Sidiq/Tory £1.6billion mismanagement black hole somehow.
Feckless twats!
TfL told to hike fares and strip elderly of free travel to access new £1bn bailout
Measures including extending congestion charge area ‘totally unacceptable to the mayor’, source saysConditions such as extending a £15 congestion charge to the North and South Circular and taking free travel away from children and older people would be totally unacceptable to the mayor”, the source added.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tfl-bus-london-underground-fare-free-travel-bailout-sadiq-khan-b1058724.html
If the centre of London is anything to go by, this really would be the last nail in the capitals coffin.
TCO knows that enough gullible berks voted for Boris as mayor a decade or so ago. They know SK is getting pelters for the ConCharge and fares increases imposed on TFL by the tories this year.
it’s pure simplistic political chicuntery with added profiteering
when this is imposed the incumbent mayor will get the blame
london usually elects Labour mayor
Tories shifted the ConCharge boundaries before purely for votes
If there’s another tory mayor they’ll do it again
they believe the electorate is stupid enough to fall for it again
the timing of this ‘leak’ exposes precisely TCO’s low opinion of the electorate Page 1 Scummings’s playbook
And their friends/paymasters get the contract for collecting and pursuing the charges
Full disclosure: road pricing for fossil fuelled personal transport is ecologically imperative just sociologically unpalatable
The accelerated migration away from the cities will mitigate this as an issue within a decade
The expanded CC zone was introduced to further improve traffic flow - hasn't worked.
The ULEZ was introduced to improve air quality - not much change there.
The expanded ULEZ will be introduced to further improve air quality - I wonder what will happen ?
It's not Cummings, this is right out of the Blair/Brown stealth tax handbook - make the punters pay again for the things they have already paid for.
After paying for public transport in London since I was 5 (yes, kids did pay before), now over 60, I am going to be asked to pay again.
In fairness to the Mayor though, public transport in London has been too cheap for many years (IMO). Folk are taking 2 bus journeys for £1.70, whilst drinking a coffee they paid £3 for.
I wonder if the "zones" system could be replaced with a more direct "miles traveled" pricing structure, where the journey price reduced as you accumulated more miles traveled over the day/week/month/year ? - just a thought.
And if you get a bus there's not a lot of folk on them drinking £3 coffees.
Disappointed I apparently have to give the credit to Boris rather than Sadiq.
Transport for London (TfL) has secured a last-minute extension of its bailout to keep services running for two weeks.
The government will continue the terms of the current £1.6bn bailout package, until 31 October - roughly equivalent to £113m.
The original bailout was due to run out on Saturday.
The mayor's office claimed the government was asking for the £15 congestion charge to the North and South Circular.
A spokesperson added "taking free travel away from children and older people" was a red line for the mayor.
City Hall had complained of punitive conditions attached to the first grant at the last minute, including extra borrowing, slashing free travel for older people and under 18s and raising fares next year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54568920Just another stealth tax.
The new social distance pavement measures have made it almost impossible to avoid bank junction when travelling through the city. That's a £65/130 fine for any car between 7am to 7pm.
Funny that.
Boris Johnson’s lie about Sadiq Khan is revealing in more ways than one
If either the Prime Minister or the Tory mayoral candidate had a way to help London deal with Covid-19, they would surely have shared it.
What should we make of Boris Johnson’s lie that Sadiq Khan bankrupted Transport for London? The first, and in many ways most important, thing is that it again shows that the press struggles to cover out-and-out lies from politicians. Johnson’s claim is not “disputed”, it is not “arguable”: it is as false as if I were to claim that today in PMQs, Johnson pulled down his trousers, announced, “I’m going to do to the coronavirus what I’m doing to this despatch box” before proceeding to rub himself against it.
Transport for London (TfL) has a day-to-day operating deficit, but one that it has successfully closed year-on-year for the past five years. Its financial reserves also grew in that time. TfL has faced three hits to its budget in the past decade. Two of them can be blamed on decisions made by London mayors. The first concerns the loss of its operating grant in 2017-18, which makes TfL one of the only major public transport networks in Europe to be funded day-to-day solely by fares and local government – a decision rubber-stamped by Johnson. It is uncontroversial to say this is the fault of the Prime Minister.
The second is Khan’s decision to freeze transport fares (from 2016 to 2020). Since, without the direct grant the mayor of London only has two funding levers directly available to him – increasing fares and raising the mayoral council tax precept, which is capped by central government – it was very foolish of him to bind his hands.
Then there’s the delay in the construction of Crossrail, which could be due to bad decisions made by Johnson at the start of the project, bad decisions made by Khan during its middle period, or simply bad luck.
More worrying is the trend you can’t blame anyone for, other than perhaps Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee, who brought us the iPhone and the World Wide Web respectively: the decline in passenger numbers on London transport. The biggest single driver of this is the easy availability of ride-hailing apps, from Uber to Lyft to FreeNow to Addison Lee. This change in how Londoners travel has serious implications for transport policy not only in London, but in the United Kingdom and across the world.
But the impact of all of these doesn’t change that the story of the past five years – covering Johnson’s final year in the mayoral office and Khan’s first term – is one in which the operating deficit has closed, not widened. It is simply untrue to say that Khan “bankrupted” TfL. The transport body’s economic problems, like those of the country as a whole, cannot be separated from the novel coronavirus and its economic consequences.
Johnson’s lie reveals two interesting trends in politics, in addition to the media problem. The first is that British politics has not yet come to terms with devolution. The argument Johnson should be making about TfL is that decisions taken by him and Khan put the body in good shape going into the crisis, because fundamentally Khan’s record is his record. He should be appropriating Khan’s successes, not creating a fictional record of failure.
The second is that Johnson has no clue how to fix the huge, coronavirus-shaped problem in London’s economy, which may not be resolved for a very long time, if at all. Neither, for that matter, does Shaun Bailey, the Conservative London mayoral candidate for 2021. If they did, then they would have a serious, fact-based dividing line to draw with Khan, who has also yet to set out a vision to navigate London through the changed world. But they have nothing of substance to add, so they instead tell lies that Londoners simply do not believe.
Electorally, that doesn’t matter, because the Conservatives are not going to win the London mayoralty and their path to Downing Street no longer runs through the capital. But the health of the economy is important to the Conservatives' electoral success – and that no Conservative appears to have a plan to revive what Johnson himself once rightly described as the “engine room” of the British economy will have big economic consequences for us all, and may have political ones for the Tories as well.
[see also: Transport for London is in crisis but the Conservatives have no right to blame Sadiq Khan]
Just a thought
The government is threatening TfL, that to get a financial bailout the congestion charge zone should also to be extended to the north and south circulars. To me that would be political suicide for the Tories in London. South and Southwest London actually get off quite lightly as the A205 is such a weirdly shaped (and useless) road. but vast amounts of North London would be caught by this.
I suppose all them fines will help pay the 500 odd staff on 150k salaries inc them million pound goodbye golden handshakes.
All the racists will fall for that line.