Unclogging the traffic arteries ‘up to the public’

A LONDON-STYLE anti-congestion and pollution-reduction traffic system that charges motorists to drive into downtown areas could be applied to cities such as Melbourne or Sydney, but only if the public and political will was there, according to a UK traffic expert.

In Australia to address the 2009 Intelligent Transport Systems Summit in Melbourne last week, Transport of London’s head of technology delivery group Jeremy Evans told GoAuto that the problem of congestion had to be apparent to the man in the street before any proposal for a congestion tax was likely get off the ground.

“The key part of it is public acceptance,” he said. “That leads to political acceptability. If one or other of those is not there, it is not going to happen because the politician is not going to lose their next election.

“To some extent the problem has got to be apparent to everyone – that people are suffering increased congestion and that they can recognise that such a charging scheme makes a difference and they would benefit from it.” In London, motorists and truckers pay an 8 ($A14.46) daily flat rate for the privilege of driving into the defined central London charging area, unless they qualify for an exemption that applies to local residents, alternative-fuel vehicles such as electric and hybrid cars, disabled people’s transport, buses with more than nine seats and a range of service vehicles and taxis.

Left: Transport of London's Jeremy Evans. Below: The London charge zone logo.

A system of 1360 roadside cameras with registration number identification capability built into the pole photographs 1.45 million vehicles a day, automatically sorting the exempt vehicles from those that have to be charged and billed.

Mr Evans, who is also vice-chairman of ITS UK, said the introduction of the road charge (which started out at 5) for cars and trucks in central London from February 2003 had reduced the volume of “four-or-more-wheels vehicles” in the charging area by 25 per cent, or about 70,000 vehicles a day.

He said the charging zone was doubled in size by incorporating an area to the west of central London in 2007, removing a further 30,000 cars a day from the downtown precinct.

Little change had been noted in the number of trips by people into central London, with a 29 per cent increase in bus patronage and – most dramatic of all – a 90 per cent increase in bicycle traffic. Overall, 90 per cent of all trips into London are now taken on public transport – the Underground or buses.

Congestion – the original purpose of the scheme – initially fell 30 per cent, but now has returned to pre-charge levels, mainly because the effective capacity of the road network had been reduced due to a range of issues.

These include a reallocation of road space to buses, bicycles and pedestrians, plus ongoing works on roads and replacement of old Victorian-era water mains and sewers.

However, Mr Evans said the system still provided clear advantages, with the increased efficiency of buses and reduced environmental impact being key among them.

“It’s more efficient to have 40 people in a bus than in cars,” he said.

Mr Evans said the London flat-rate charge system – a “crude system” that reflected the limits of technology at the time – would not necessarily work for everyone, as it could discourage political support. Manchester and Edinburgh were two such cities in the UK that had taken a look at charging, but decided not to proceed.

“If you were charging in a more flexible way for time and distance travelled, and particularly related to where roads were congested in peak periods, I think that would be more publicly acceptable,” he said.

Mr Evans said that in London, many businesses had identified traffic congestion as a serious inhibitor to the economy of central London, and had contributed this view to studies with local authorities in the 1990s.

With such grassroots support, the UK government had passed enabling legislation and set up the Strategic London Authority in 2000, paving the way for the London mayor to give the green light to a charging scheme.

The scheme had been a major plank of the election policies of the then mayor, who had promised to set it in motion in his first term.

Mr Evans said opponents of the system had suggested that discouraging traffic from entering central London would simply move congestion to surrounding areas.

He said Transport of London modelling in the planning stages indicated that would not happen.

Traffic that would otherwise have taken the ‘radial’ or cross-town route was encouraged on to ring roads by adjusting traffic light phasing so the ring roads got a longer ‘green’ light sequence to help them move more vehicles in a peripheral movement around the city.

“There was maybe a two-to-three per cent increase in traffic on the peripheral route on the ring road around the zone, and it was able to cope with that without leading to additional congestion there,” he said.

Mr Evans said half of London’s 6000 sets of traffic signals could be controlled remotely, helping to adjust traffic flow to minimise congestion and deal with problems such as breakdowns and crashes.

He said Transport of London also used real-time computer modelling that could predict outcomes from traffic hiccups and suggest solutions at an accelerated speed to help to avert gridlock.

The computer system could even work in parallel on alternative solutions in case traffic managers rejected the first suggestion.

Mr Evans said buses were the quick way to increase public transport capability when introducing a charging scheme.

“It is very difficult to plan a new rail route or increase rail capacity – it takes a lot longer time, a few years,” he said.

Mr Evans said the London mayor, who is now Boris Johnston, had the power under his executive powers to procure more buses and reallocate funds to create more bus lanes around the city.

He said bus services were one of the biggest beneficiaries of funds raised by the congestion charges on motorists, which last year amounted to 268 million ($A484m).

After taking out costs of 131 million, the net result was 137 million that by law had to be spent on transport improvements – most of it on the bus services.

Mr Evans said studies to predict London development and related transport requirements indicated that the congestion charging system would not only play a continuing role in controlling London traffic but fees would have to be increased to prevent a return of unacceptable congestion.

He said the next step was vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, using vehicles’ GPS systems to help the traffic system automatically manage traffic flow – a vision that should become reality within 10 years.

These systems were being developed in the US, Europe and Japan, but a lot international co-operation was going on to ensure global standards, he said