Does congestion charging prevent congestion or is it just away of the government taking more money from us?

Congestion charging was introduced to London by the mayor of London Ken Livingston in the year of 2003. It was seen as a solution to the high traffic in central London and making more people use public transport, the money that is made will be used for further improvements and for new transport projects. Capita is responsible for the payment process and have a contract with TFL till 2009. The way it works is that when you drive into central London you will have to pay £8 it runs from 7:00 am to 6:30 pm Monday to Friday and if you pay late after 10pm on the day of the travel you will be asked to pay £10. The payment can be made my text, online, or pay point at shops.

If the vehicle is detected by the digital cameras that use license recognition software (which I will go into more detail later) and the payment of £8 wasn’t made then driver will be fined for £50 if this amount isn’t paid in 14 days then it goes up to £100 then £150 if it isn’t paid in 28 days. Busses, taxis, emergency vehicles, bicycle, motor cycle and alternative fuel vehicle are let off the congestion charge although they may need to register it.
This project is personal to me because I lived in London and had to travel through the congestion zone even though I wasn’t driving I found that using the London transport was getting more difficult because more people stopped using their cars and started to use the London transport. This caused problems because there weren’t enough busses on road and then there is the underground that isn’t really reliable if it isn’t a strike then it’s the lines not working due to problems. I believe that this issue concerns students that are studying in London because it’s hard and expensive to travel.

The progress that the government has made to the high traffic in London is that it’s bought down the traffic and the emission the table below shows the emission levels since 2002 to 2004 which proves that the congestion charging has improved the level of emission .
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The congestion charge plan is the CCTV cameras which record vehicles entering and exiting the charge zone using the automatic number plate recognition ANPR). The ANPR is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the licence plates on vehicles. As of 2006, systems can scan number plates at around one per second on cars travelling up to 100 mph (160 km/h). Also there are mobile camera units in the area that capture the vehicles by taking two still pictures in colour and black and white and use infra red technology to identify the number plates on cars. The identified numbers are checked against the list of payees overnight by computer. In those cases when a number plate has not been recognized then they are checked by humans. The license plates are then looked up in a database provided by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and those that have not paid and are seen are fined.
This scheme has proven that the traffic congestion has bought ease to the traffic congestion in central London by persuading people to switch from private cars to public transport. But in my opinion the congestion charge hasn’t made a lot of improvements, there is still a problem for people travelling that are made to catch a bus or tube etc because the tubes are always delayed or on strike and the busses are not enough. I know this because I went through it whilst travelling to college daily it was very tough to get on a bus or a tube it would be packed with people some busses wouldn’t stop. So really has it improved because we are only shown figures of improvements on the traffic but not the quality or if the society is satisfied with this scheme? So this leads me to believe that congestion charging isn’t really to prevent congestion it’s just a way of the government taking more money from us. If there was a real improvement the society would be happy with it.

I will use this information that i have written to help write my report with help from the sites such as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
http://www.cclondon.com/
http://www.citymayors.com/report/congestion_charge.html
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/07/london_mayor_ca.html