Congestion Zone

Modern life is rubbish. It makes no sense and costs a fortune.

It’s sinister too. This picture shows how people are greeted as they arrive at the bottom of Holland Park Avenue. Creepy C-Charge cameras.



The oddities of Ken Livingstone's and Capita’s Extended London Congestion Zone are many.

Take these beautiful camera poles. The Royal Borough threatened legal action when these were put up, given their ugly, menacing appearance in one of the few parts of London that cares about its street furniture.

(Building with consideration and sympathy, with sense of harmony and human scale is quite the vogue at the moment. You only have to look at the Shepherds Bush Multiplex shopping centre to know this.)

This is odd too: there is often a C-Charge van parked on Holland Park Avenue, monitoring the congestion, presumably. And occupying a traffic lane to do this. The irony.

If you are rich enough to live inside the C-Charge Zone and own a car, you are entitled to a residents discount. And the discount is amazing. For just £4 you get a full week in the zone.

Given a travel card is £5.30 per day, where’s the incentive to leave the car?

The rich stay rich. The poor of Shepherds Bush and beyond get poorer (It's £8 a day for them, no discounts).

Some people are being persuaded to leave their cars at home… as evidenced by the growing number of bikes. I'm one of them.

This is all very encouraging but then have you tried to secure your bike anywhere near Holland Park tube station on a working weekday?

You can’t unless you get there before 6am or bring your own bike rack. There are bikes attached to trees, foot-scrapers, discarded children.

You can't really ask people to get out of their cars but not provide alternative solutions when they do.