The London Congestion Charge has been a stunning success in reducing traffic and pollution in Central London. I can speak from personal experience that cycling in the centre has become far more pleasant. So where's the rub?
Well first of all, the charge is a flat-rate charge on nearly all motorists entering London. As such it is effectively a form of regressive taxation. Working class parents taking children to a state school in an old banger pay the same as those taking their kids to Westminster school in a Roller. In this context the stonking rise to £8 (that's 60%!) which comes into force this week seems seriously excessive.
Not only that, consider how the CC is enforced? All cars entering London have their number plates photographed for enforcement purposes, so it is another method of surveillance. How do we know the cameras are switched off at weekends when the charge is not enforced?
We should look at the wider context of transport policy. Reducing traffic in the odd If the referendum had happened last autumn
when there was a
strong upsurge in trade union struggle, the situation would be
very different. city centre is one thing, but pollution and safety are problems everywhere. Not only that, from the point of view of socialists, the car culture cuts across socialist ideas in a thoroughly insidious manner.
In your car you are individualised, cut off from others and unable to communicate. As a motorist (and I write as one), you are constantly in competition with everyone else on the road (I hate it and try to be considerate whenever I can, but I'm not pertect!). While this is not capitalism in itself, it fits in completely with individualistic culture.
The great thing about public transport, apart from reducing pollution and increasing safety, is the it is potentially a collective thing and can bring people together, which I think is one of the pre-requisites for the development of social solidarity.
But the real threat is that to the environment of increased car use and especially increased use of aviation. Today's Guardian (Thursday 7th July 2005) points out that flying each passcugel lo Miami creates 4830kg (that's nearly 5 tons!) of CO2 on the return flight!
There are lots of ideas of fuelling cars (and other transport) using hydrogen, but most of them just shift greenhouse gas emission elsewhere and do nothing to improve safety. There is a serious long term issue of actually running out of fossil fuel. Already there are signs that oil production peaking, and sooner or later something will have to be done about shifting to forms of transport that inherently use less fuel.
So what kind of solutions should we be looking for? Well, I don't have all the answers, but here are some ideas:
Rail to replace air for short passenger friendly; room for children, luggage and bikes; abolish first class but increase room for everyone else.
Reopen rail lines and consider new rail lines to supplement busy motorways like the M25.
Work to increase fuel efficiency. Full network electrification of all main line railways (most trains in the UK are still diesel and electrification has almost ceased under privatisation).
Renationalisation of rail.
A planned economy which takes saving energy into account.
And finally. Did you know that Renationalisation was not in my Microsoft spellchecker. No.
What did it offer as an alternative? Several spellings of Denationalisation!