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Charge fails as congestion returns
Page 13
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• Four out of 10—that's the lowly score given to London's congestion charging scheme by members of the Freight Transport Association. And it's not as if many of them weren't looking forward to the scheme; after all, 25 a day wouldn't be too much if it were to clear London's roads to enable speedier, more efficient deliveries for operators.
But it hasn't worked like that; after the initial weeks where traffic levels fell, they've crept back up again— and it seems hauliers have had more problems than benefits from the scheme.
This has become apparent in the FTA's latest look at congestion charging. It surveyed members who account for about 100,000 vehicles, with 80% of respondents using a fleet account, totalling about 10,000 vehicles: the graph shows exactly what they think.
Operators using the fleet schemes—supposed to ease the administration burden—seem to have experienced the worst problems, rating the overall scheme as "poor" in the ETA survey. This must be particularly galling, as these operators pay 10% more per truck per day at £5.50.
Sarah Watkins, FTA policy manager for London and the South-East, says that operators who are part of the fleet scheme have had to bear high costs in terms of setting up and running their accounts. Current estimates suggest they are having to spend an average of 57 days a year on the scheme; for all companies with fleet accounts this equates to 340 working years—and a total cost of at least 27m.
But just how does London's congestion charge stack up so dramaticallyP • The charge itself, at 25 or 25.50 per vehicle per day, will raise £40m a year.
• A £10 fee for registering each discount for an alternative fuel or breakdown vehicle.
• A £10 annual fee for registering each vehicle on a fleet account, and for changing any vehicle details.
• An additional cost for employees of businesses based in the zone.
• Administration costs for companies which don't meet the criteria for the fleet scheme for technical reasons, or because they have less than 25 vehicles.
• in terms of fleet accounts, it will take each company an average of 57 days to set up and run each account in the first year.
However, Watkins says operators who are paying on a daily basis—and who are not in a fleet scheme—are much happier with congestion charging. They score it more highly than companies which are in the fleet scheme, but the FTA suggests that this may be because fleet operators pay more, incur higher administration charges and are therefore particularly aggrieved.
"We are campaigning for changes; we've identified 46 areas where Transport for London fTfL.1 could make practical improvements," says Watkins. ''TfL has moved some way on the fleet scheme since its start, but it's still intensively bureaucratic. "We have met with Tft but we may not be able to resolve all the problems—the scheme is just inherently administratively burdensome for operators."
However, a spokeswoman for TfL says that it has tried to make the scheme as easy to administer as possible, and defends the claim that it hasn't reduced congestion within the zone.
he idea of the scheme was to reduce congestion and it has done that. It is a fact that congestion has fallen by 32% and traffic speed has risen by 37% within the zone.
"We acknowledge that we had difficulties in the early days with the fleet scheme, but we have apologised for that and have rectified our mistakes; it's an innovative scheme and there were bound to be problems."
She adds that TfL is collating its own statistics on the scheme, and will release a report in the autumn after it has been in operation for six months; it was introduced on February 17. "As part of this report, we will be looking to see whether improvements can be made—and if they can, we will consider them,"