For goodness sake, how much more money do these politicians think they can milk out of motorists without giving something back. now public transport costs are on the move upwards too. Maybe independent travel is to be reserved for politicians and the wealthy.

Len, Cambridge, England

I do not go to London anymore to shop! I am sure that I am not alone. The charge is a noose around London's neck. It will kill the golden goose of enterprise. It is about time that the politicians realised that the 'genie is out of the bottle' and people want personal travel in their own space. Without fear. You do not get that on the tube or bus. And, motorists pay at least 3 times more on tax etc than they get back in road improvements. London should follow the example of Boston and admit defeat and start to accomodate the car!
Cheers,

Ian McLaughlin, Camberley, Surrey

The only thing to do is to use your vote and vote against Mayor Ken - vote for anyone LibDem or Conservative whatever. Also make it clear to the pollsters that this is the one issue that is causing you to change your vote. If enough people did this the threat of lossing his job might influence our Ken.

Oh Yes, has anyone who drives around central London noticed all the improvements to pedestrian crossings at the expense of motorists. How many 3 lane red lights have I seen reduced to 2 lanes with extra large pavement areas installed instead. Stop the madness.

Its enough to give you road rage.

David Boxley, East London, London

Ken is following the typical line of a communist leader - spend lots of time and money on self promotion and his 'palace' city hall to prove how powerful he is to everyone. Then control the masses with particular focus on those with any money (and therefore independence).

Richard Sullivan, Chislehurst, Kent

Move out! We did, and we are so much better off being out of that noisy, polluted, overcrowded, ugly city. I used to love London but it has become unpleasant to live in, crime-ridden, difficult to travel around, and it offers nothing that I can't find elsewhere (except perhaps the theatre).

Spend your money elsewhere, and let London go down the tubes with Ken!!

Abigail, Guildford,

If the original £280,000,000 it cost to set up the scheme had been spent on road improvements, or paying for traffic wardens to direct traffic, (rather than penalise it )or even if it had been spent on building car parks next to stations it would have had more of an impact on congestion than the charge. It could of course also have been spent on speeding up road works.
The call centres for the congenstion charge are not even in London- an organisation that does not produce anything, requires and makes no deliveries apparently cannot be located in london as it is too expensive to do so. As a result over £100,000,000 per year is paid by Londoners to Coventry and Glasgow. Brilliant.
Yet apparently the solution is to go on charging more.
Those in power like Mr Livingstone who draw their saleries from the tax paid by others may like to consider offering real alternatives rather than penalties for a change.

Richard Brooks, London,

We can now correctly identify this as a revenue raising system (sometimes known as 'a tax'). It was obvious that if it achieved its target for revenue raising that congestion could not be reduced. This, of course, is exactly the same as the congestion charge (road tolls) proposed by the Government, as, if that achieves it's stated aims (reducing congestion) there will be no extra maney raised and may lead to a tax loss. No wonder other countries, who quite obviously care a lot more about the car driving public than the UK government, are now thinking twice about introducing similar systems. However, that said, Ken Livingstone did say he was going to do this and Londoners still elected him, so you have the Mayor you voted for.

David Leslie, Perth, Scotland

So now it looks like Ken will push through the £25 con charge despite public opinion being against it - the same as the extension to the zone! I have an audi A3 - not a massive car, but that will be £25 a day! What a rip off this tax is. I will vote for anybody who will scrap this charge.

Tim, Wimbledon, London

I think rather than spend all this money on conventional busses, TfL should be looking at more radical tram, trolley bus or guided busway schemes. Other European cities have these. They are clean and efficent. They carry far more people far more quickly than cars. London doesn't have any of these excluding the rather limited Croydon tram network. It is bigger, busier and richer than most other European cities, it should be leading innovative transport thinking!

Luke Nicolaides, London, UK

I have seen one comment in favour of road charging which is one more than I expected. I largely agree with Katharina although I'm dubious about its use to combat pollution. It is what it says it is -- a congestion charge, not a tax. A tax implies no benefit to the user. The congestion charge is the rent paid for the road space a car uses during its journey. At peak hours the space increases tremendously in value and so the rent needs to be higher.

I'm not suggesting that the charge isn't very crude, it is and so nothing like optimal benefit is conferred on the the user or supplier. For example, no account is taken of the length of time the road space is used so there is no incentive for limited use during the day. Furthermore, special interest groups which enjoy massive discounting have been created.

Why do people assume it has not been a success. How much have rental values or public transport fares increased in the last five years. Why should there not be a doubling of the charge?

Steven Roberts, Goffs Oak, England

does Ken really care about congestion NO its all about money.

S Nazarko, surrey, U.K

People, next time vote! You have the right, at least for now to VOTE! So go and vote to get rid of Stalin wannabe Ken the menace!
That goes for the helpfull "ban all cars" people, in a dictatorship the idealist zealots perish the first!

Jondi Saka, London, UK

"Congestion fell by 30 per cent in the first year of the charging scheme but is now only 8 per cent below precharging levels"

These numbers are all very well, but where are the projected figures for what congestion would have been like now without the charge? If, without the charge, congestion had been predicted to rise steadily over the period in question we might still in fact be 30% (or even more?) better off now. Or we might be worse off - the point is without this projection the remaining headline figures are pretty meaningless.

Tim, London,

I consider that any extension of congestion charging schemes as operating in Central London will only encourage an increase of the 'underclass' of driver as identified in the Times last month.
I have not seen published any positive methods of preventing vehicle users failing to to identify themselves as keepers with the DVLA or using cloned number plates and therefore the numberplate recognition method of charging is flawed.
It is also unlikely that any vehicle user who fails to pay VED or vehicle insurance is going to bother investing in the electronic block box necessary for digital recording. So how will these evaders be detected? Presumably by numberplate recognition cameras?

The proposals as they stand at the moment appear to encourage the evaders.

D.J.Sewell, CHELTENHAM, Glos.

1. this week an evening power cut on London's embankment and Aldwych put all traffic lights out of action.....the drive home has never been so quick. Why not turn the lights off every evening after 8pm?

2. Thanks to the c-charge i now drive around the central zone: my journey time is now 50% longer and my mpg 25% lower. Is this what Ken intended?

London's traffic management systems are crude and ineffective (and possibly deliberately mismanaged) because no-one has ever bothered to set clear goals and measures for the efficient use of roadspace. If they did, we'd see roadworks done overnight (like on the motorways); more people getting from A to B faster; deliberate waste of resources made an offence....and higher petrol prices - the most effective way to collect taxes with which to improve public transport.

ian weston, london,

Isn't it funny that Red Ken is expanding the congestion charge to give the wealthiest London residents a 90% discount to using there cars, while doing nothing about the poluted and heavily congested east end.

He's not 'Red Ken', he's done more for the wealthiest Londoners and less for the poor than anyone since Wellington and the Corn Reform Laws!

Matthew, London,

The congestion charge is effectively a flat tax, disproportionately hurting the middle classes.

The route to my children's school was not covered by public transport, and was brutally congested. To add insult to injury, traffic wardens waited while we took the children inside to give us parking tickets.

This feeling of a perpetual stuggle is wearing on people just trying to provide for their families. It is leading to a flight of the professional classes abroad, who are being replaced by younger less qualified people from elsewhere in the EC.. It dampening the spirit of the city that I grew up in, but no longer live

Anthony Silver, New York & London, USA and UK

Where does the congestion charge go anyway? The money collected each month is plenty to build a few more roads and a parallel city to London. If that doesn't solve it, why not introduce zero-emission buses run by fuel cells, for all short distance, frequent services?

Seriously, I have another idea, please pass this to Ken L as well. How about using congestion charges to build boarding facilities for kids near each school? The scheme could be extended to teacher accomodation too.

Dr. A Sam, Bath, UK

The externalities a car generates (noise, pollution, cocooning, etc.) need to be priced into a car journey. The congestion charge is one step in making drivers pay for the effect of their decision to use a car. As a result it is a very good idea.
The reason the congestion charge has not had a long-term effect is that drivers get used to the charge and revert to their previous behaviour. To keep up the effect on decision making, the charge will need to be increased continuously.
The other question is where should collected funds go? - Best would be to hypothecate these to London's ailing tube system.

Katharina, London, UK

Phil of Preston. Fully electric vehicles are just as polluting as diesel IC engines. The only difference is that the hydrocarbon is burned at the power station instead of in the engine. In fact, it is likely that electric cars are more polluting than IC engine cars. Hydrocarbons need to be burnt to heat water which turns turbines which generates electricity. This multiple conversion of energy types is notoriously inefficient (which is why gas boilers are more viable for central heating than fully electric systems), and more greenhouse gases need to be burnt to provide the energy to move the car.

This is why the London borough that provides cheaper/free parking for electric cars is so fundamentally flawed, that one suspects that they did little to no research on the subject matter. One could also conclude that their intentions was to squeeze more from the rich Chelsea Tractor drivers as we all know there aren't a lotta electric cars out there!

Pete, Cov,

How does Ken Livingston get away with all this? He extends the congession charge to K&C which won't reduce congestion, only fill his pockets and allow the wealthy to drive to work in the city at mininum cost, whilst penalising everyone else. He continues to aim his emission attacks at the car driver, whilst those who walk down the street are poisoned with the fumes of buses, taxes and lorries - where's his tax on those vehicles? He's introduced so many traffic lights that even when there is no congestion the traffic lights ensure some is created. Show me one of his transport initiatives have improved transport in london or benefitted those who have to endure his policies and pay his rates on a daily basis. Can this man not be stopped?

Hiliary, London, UK

The "congestion charge" has never been and never will be concerned with congestion. It is purely a tax to fund a London Mayor.

Malcolm Barrett, Bexleyheath,

Move away from London. I have. True there is one less car on London's roads - but I now don't spend any money there either - it all goes into my local shops, services and transport systems.

BP, Somerset, UK

Many roads in The City and Central London were closed for security reasons, (The Ring of Steel) so far so cool, but in the last three years more roads have been closed for reasons unknown to the rational mind, The Trafalger Sq fiasco, most roads off Victoria Embankment including essential ones such as Queen St are blocked permanently and pointless except to create congestion all the way from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge most of the time, if there is an accident, people, including those on buses are stuck, sometimes for hours. The crime is then pinned on the victims by Ken, it's a scam and all know it.

Frank Hutchinson, London, England

Barry of Wallington - buses are huge polluters belching out diesel fumes. All diesel public transport should be removed from the streets. If they werre electric - now you're talking. As for the underground - you only have to look at the map to see that London south of the river is poorly served and generally, it's not kept up with the outward spread of London. By far the best method of travelling above ground within London is by scooter or bike. We heard recently (difficult to believe tho) that a very green form of private transportation - the Segway scooter - was banned because of some stupid law or objection......this at a time when we are trying to cut down on CO2 emissions! Please tell me it's not true Ken.....

Phil, Preston,

Surely the point of introducing the congestion charging zone was to see if it would work. £8 per day is already alot of money, so just increasing the amount charged will have proportionally small effect.

As Ken actually admits, the best way to ensure smooth running of the capital would be to co-ordinate & regulate roadworks more efficiently, and improve the availablity and cleanliness of public transport.

I hate going on the tube with an absolute passion. Not only is it extortionately expensive but it is hot and incredibly crowded. It also services south london very, very, badly. Investment in the tube is expensive but so is my council tax and so are major sporting events such as the Olympics and - God help us - World Cup football. Time to get London's priorities straight.

Victoria, London, UK

When is Livingstone going to realise that all his pseudo-excuses, backed by dodgy "statistics", do not get at the heart of the congestion issue in London. The congestion charge was never about reducing congestions or emissions, but rather is a tax on those who Livingstone resents ("rich" car drivers). If it had been, he would be enforcing the existing laws about people stopping/parking on red routes and in bus lanes - these are the true causes of congestion in London. If the issue is pollution, then he'll need to as a first step test all London cabs and buses, as the crap spewed out by these vehicles cannot possibly pass even 10-year old emissions standards, let alone new ones.
My "research" is a little more mundane than Mr Livingstone's: I drive through London from northwest to southeast every day, and will continue to do so until we have a clean, reliable, and economical public transport system. Currently we are far away from that. And what is his yearly cab bill again....?

Thomas Zeeb, London, UK

Stop kidding yourselves!

This congestion charge was never anything to do with congestion or the environment. It was always about raising funds from the easiest target - the driver!

Thank goodness the good people of Edinburgh saw through it and voted against a similar scheme here!

Jack, Edinburgh,

People get use to the extra tax, then they cut back on other spending. The price of getting to work goes up on public transportation and then it's back to the car. Someone should ask Ken how he got around here in Miami when he came over to the Super Bowl, plus why don't they rebate the tax to the people that ride public transportation.

bernard michael (florida), delray, fl.u.s.a.

Why don't you all just vote for someone/some party that will do away with the congestion charge. Surely Red Ken is not appointed Mayor for Life ?

Tim Locke, Guelph , Canada

I live at a very busy junction in Surrey, just outside London.
Using Ken Livingstone's principle, why cannot a Congestion Charge be placed on this junction, to reduce the congestion, pollution, noise, etc., and reclaim the peace of our village for the benefit of us locals?
I cannot believe how easily Livingstone imposed his tax. I never drive in central London, but I'm vehemently opposed to the imposition of charges that impede our free passage around our country. The PRINCIPLE is wrong.
What's good for London must be good for EVERY part of the country. Except that the Congestion Charge is NOT good for London, as your story clearly illustrates.

Barry C. Brown, Burgh Heath, Surrey

When leader of the GLC, Livingston taxed Londoners to the limit with his transport policy. Tourists and out-of-town commuters were the beneficiary at the expense of the poor old resident taxpayer. Did anyone think it would be different this time around?

MarkS, Leeds,

The charge needs to be higher. If the marginal cost of taking a car into London is about the same as the price of a tube ticket, then the city will clog up with tens of thousands of cars.

Better still would be a complete ban on private cars within the M25. The bus service would then be so good that journey times would be slashed, and we wouldn't have the nuisance of cars on the streets.

Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK

the tube fares have recently gone up and the service is really unacceptable. the number of delays on the piccadilly line in the past few weeks has been extraordinary. we are having to pick family members up from tube stations because the trains are not running properly. delays affect our lives by making us late. the underground is not clean at all. as a londoner i despair. we seem totally incapable of running a system that actually does what it is supposed to do.

RICHARD GARRY, LONDON,

Class thing? Give us a break! Has the fact that the world is heating ups, that our coastline is disappearing, that floods up the Thames get more and more likely, that we are going to totaly change our climate..passed you by??? These things are difficult for us.. but catastrophic for people in low lying areas world wide which will flood or places which will become deserts? Huge Water shortages world wide... so many problems.. all caused by Global Warming. We may all be amused by the Jeremy Clarkson's of this world.. but driving fast in huge heavy cars has to become socially unacceptable .. like smoking and drinking and driving.. in order that people no longer WANT to drive the vehicles which create the most pollution. If you stop and think for a moment of the price your children will pay for global warming.. maybe your large fast car will become less important?

Pinkerton, London, England

Like Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone understands the economic theory of the elasticity of demand. When he needs to raise money for pet schemes he chooses those areas where elasticity is very low. No matter how high the pricing goes, as for example for private motoring in cities, smoking, or alchoholic drinks, users have few alternatives and so have to pay the increased price or go without. The alternative to driving in London is to be squashed into an alien environment of poor quality expensive public transport. None of the money raised by the congestion charge is used to improve the situation, but goes on overseas trips for the mayor and his entourage and beaurocracy. Nothing will change until we use our votes to remove them both.

M Morris, Horsham,

I'm a courier and drive in London almost every day. Roadworks are left literally for months without being completed. Traffic management schemes create deliberate bottlenecks. And above all, nearly 2000 extra traffic lights, and the timings on a vast number have been deliberately set to cause rather than relieve congestion - I am utterly sick of sitting at unnecessary red lights in London.

Typical politician's trick - create a problem, deliberately exacerbate it then offer to fix it. Why should we be the ones who have to pay?

Peter Kane, London,

If public transport was efficient, reliable and cost effective, I believe that the issue of conjestion and all charges relating to that would not be relevant. The general public would have a decent alternative to their own vehicles. The money gained from the conjestion charge should to be put towards improving public transport.

Tilly East, London, London

Did anyone ever doubt that the "Congestion Charge" was purely and simply a TAX. Rob Peter to pay Paul is the golden rule of socialism.

John Salkeld, Sheffield, England

Years ago I remember a somewhat amusing debate as to whether or not travelling by tube was in fact the single most expensive form of transport on a ‘per mile’ basis. Though the discussion was a light-hearted one, it did highlight the inequalities that can be generated by an ill thought out, arbitrary fare/taxation scheme. This new binomial congestion charge pricing proposal is a crass example of such a system. As an individual I live approx. 30 metres inside the congestion charge zone and drive a car that is about 5-6% over the proposed carbon threshold. Any discounts I may have had are forfeit with this new legislation, so I will be liable to pay £25 to drive approximately 30 metres down the road and I stress, out of the zone. I would be extremely interested if anybody knows of any transport method anywhere in the world that costs a fraction under £1 per metre travelled - perhaps the space shuttle?

J. Howard, London, UK

Another smash & grab tax that will contribute nothing toward congestion reduction.

The only way to reduce congestion is to improve public transport by making it accessible and affordable. This will never happen though, especially when one considers the money the Government makes off Franchise agreements for the rail system.

chantel, UK,

How can it be legal to charge us to use roads built with our money? This should also be the main argument against Blair'sd ludicrous road-charging scheme. One day some multi-millionaire will challenge the congestion charge in court and Herr Diktator Livingstone will have to refund the lot.

Roger Tilbury, Worthing, UK

So what? The fact that traffic is creeping back up again just reflects the extra pressure from more and more vehicles pouring on to the roads generally. Congestion would be still worse if there were no charge. But why the mayor lets residents get away with paying only ten per cent is a mystery. What people forget is that the charge revenue is going, not to those politicians they love to hate once they've elected them, but mostly into more buses. Yet some people still complain of transport overcrowding, so clearly we need a much wider zone to produce more revenue for still more buses. To anyone who asks, why buses, I would in turn ask: have you thought of the effect on traffic if the six million-odd bus journeys a day were made by car instead? It is in everyone's interest to encourage the shift, including those for whom a car really is essential, such as sales reps.

Barry, Wallington, South London

I live near Clapham Junction, the busiest railway junction in Europe. You cannot use an Oyster card there and there is no tube link. It badly needs a makeover. The roads are regularly gridlocked, and will become worse with the extension of the congestion charge to Kensington and Chelsea. Buses proliferate, most of them nearly empty during much of the day. It costs £2 for a one-stop journey down or up the hill to the Junction (if you have heavy shopping, etc.). Oddly enough the Tfl 'fares and tickets' option on their website has broken down so I can't tell you what the one-day travelcard price into central London would be before 9.30am. Perhaps Ken wants us to live and work at home, or perhaps only cover the night shift?

Rose , London, United Kingdom

If paying more tax was the solution to our problems, we would all be blissful by now. Yet Ken's answer to the failure of his tax is to increase it. This is the Alcoholic's Answer.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

All this bleating. I dislike public transport immensely. Expensive, dirty, overcrowded. I've written countless letters to the respective companies asking them to at least clean the buses. I think this is the very least they can do if they insist on crowding us in like sardines. Having said that, I have used public transport to commute to work for 8 years, ever since moving to London and prior to the congestion charging. Its not that I can't afford to take the car (lets face it, after £8 CC then you then have to consider the parking), but I believe that there are simply too many cars on the road. It often annoys me as I walk across Tower Bridge to see virtually every car with one person within. The planet is sick and diseased and people are still worried about a comfortable journey. They’ll be the first to complain too when they’re children are baking on a scorched Earth.

Chris, London,

The Congestion Charge is another scheme like the lottery fund, the biggest beneficiary is the organisation running it!

Why don't politicians realise that human nature is to respond to the carrot, not the stick! Improve Public Transport and reduce the cost, and people will want to use it. You can't budget the cost of Public Transport without considering the savings achieved by reducing the damage to the environment and people's health by cars (and trucks - but that's another subject!).

Dav!d, Colchester, Essex

How much of the congestion charge tax is swallowed up by the operator's expenses? If the congestion is still the same, exactly who are we paying - and for what?

Anthony Kane, Manchester,

I think that on the whole, taxes on motor vehicles (in inner cities) is far too low. I think there was a mis-step in calling it a "congestion charge" for two reasons, the first being that its critics will measure its success solely on its ability to reduce congestion and second, it prevents other environmental factors being considered when considering increases. The article illustrates clearly that the average London motorists' tolerance to taxation affecting their behaviour has increased (and is on an upward curve). I think that the entire "motoring problem" (motorists, unsurprisingly never see themselves as a problem - but they are) has to be considered holistically. This means from licenses, to car purchase prices, to fuel costs to road pricing. Unlike many motorists, I believe that this has to be considered irrespective of other transport options - there is no deal, what happens to Public Transport is not really a relevant or useful part of the motoring debate.

Iheke Ndukwe, London,

If you want people to use public transport it must be cheap, convenient, comfortable and above all reliable. In and around London it fails dismally on all these points.

Patrick, Algeciras, Spain

I seem to remember that some bloke called Prescott was supposed to sort all this out with his infamous Green Paper back in 1997. 10 years later and still nothing has been achieved, other than higher costs to either drive or use public transport, neither of which are as efficient as they once were.

Nobby Clark, London,

Whether congestion charge is right or wrong, is only one arguement. But where does all the money go,
The travel costs on public transport have only gone up year on year and are the highest in the EU countries.
How can other countries do it so well, and our efficient mayor is unable to do it or justify it
Money is spent on asking for opinions which are over ruled by a veto of the Mayor, why this wastage?? I am sure the the mayor has some commercial sense.
This arguement can go on and on and I do not think the Mayor or his department will have any logical and sensible explaination to give the public at large that he purports to represent

N N Kini, London, England

All that was needed was to make public transport so good, you didn't need to drive your car in London.
All we have got is yet another tax, the sooner Ken
The cost of all the hi Tech cameras around the congestion charge zone cost a fortune and one way or another we all pay for it!
Livingstone gets voted out of office the better off we shall all be!

Barry Reed, Hounslow, Middlesex

But the reality of these congestion charge schemes is that they are not about seriously reducing congestion, they are all about income generation for those running and operating the schemes and as such they are dishonest to the extreme. The worst case scenario for the financial beneficiaries of these schemes would be that they significantly reduced congestion!!!

Paul Kennedy, Warrington,

Congestion charges, road charges. Nothing more than additional taxation , no matter how you "dress" it up , which will do absolutely nothing to solve the problems of our overcrwoded roads whilst Public Transport systems are in such a miserable , pathetic , overpriced state.

What is it with Livingstoine and his hate for up market cars ? Seems to be just jealousy and a class thing as far as I can make out !

Tony Cocks, Plymouth, UK

I was in London recently and I was astonished by the unrealistic cost of public transport. A single tube ticket without an Oyster card is now 4 pounds. In the Hague where I work, I can buy a week's tram pass for less. Even in Bangkok a 4 zone skytrain ticket is less than 30p, on one of the cleanest ,most efficient transport systems I have ever seen .
I have fond memories (NOT) of waiting with the other sardines to be packed into trains at London Bridge, in the freezing cold, then in summer , virtually passing out from heat exhaustion/lack of oxygen in the cattle-class carriages.
And paying 3 grand a year for the privilege.
If you want people to take up the alternative, you have to make the alternative attractive. I agree with J.Burt's comment, pricing people out just causes anger and dissent.

P.Murphy, The Hague,

Dear old Ken

What a hypocrypt, he is always banging the same old drum and yet apart from the odd photo shoot of him on a tube, he can be found constantly racking up enormous charges with a well known black cab firm, all i may add paid for by the London tax payer.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all afford the luxury of such alternative transport.

For an obviously clever man, he is incredibly stupid.

duncan holdsworth, perth, australia

I lived in Hoxton in Central London in the year leading up to congestion charging. About 10 months before the charge was introduced, road works sprung up in my neighbourhood - and remained until the week before the charge began. A friend who used to develop traffic lights for a South African engineering firm also observed that all the lights in our area were out of sequence. It seemed to be a trend across London at the time.

I suspect, and these figures prove, that Transport for London deliberately created traffic problems in the run-up to congestion charging so they could show 'an improvement' when it was introduced, with unecessaryroad blockages, etc.

Mike, London,

So the traffic levels within the congestion zone are almost at the pre-charge level, not surprising really i never believed that this charge was to reduce traffic, just another of Ken's taxes to bring in revenue.( he must be taking or giving lessons to GB) If he was really interested in making London congestion free he would be consider improving the traffic flow instead of thinking that the pocket of the motorist is a bottomless pit to be plundered every time he wants more revenue..
Your new congestion zone just pushes the traiffc into somebody elses area, and brings with it more pollution as workers who now use that area to get to work will have to learn new routes and add extra miles to their journey. Not everybody can afford 40/125.00 per week for the pleasure of going to work.
However probably the most important thing you can do is reduce the Fares on public transport when paynig cash so that people will use it not increase the fares to drive them back into their cars.

jeff cox, Takanini, New Zealand

What is the point of taking public transport when it is expensive, dirty, overcrowded, unreliable, unpredictable, and where investment in a season ticket (or any other ticket) cannot guarantee you a seat. The congestion charge has not stopped, or even improved, congestion in central London and the charge should be scrapped.

D Lusher, London, UK

People respond much better to Positive Incentives rather than Negative Disincentives: In this case, I'm certain that people would much more obviously choose public transport options rather than their cars if the public transports became cheaper (positive incentive). Instead, the policy planners are acting negatively by trying to price people out of their cars... which angers citizens and has a less succesful impact.

Thus if Mr Livingstone was truly determined to get people onto public transport, he'd be putting the prices of tubes and buses down, rather than just negatively trying to price drivers off the road. Instead, not only has the cost of driving gone up, but over the past couple of years the tube and bus fares have jumped significantly too!!

James Burt, London,

Just another tax. Public transport is too expensive considering the benefits of private transport. Though the government is trying to price everyone out of their cars, isn't it time to pressure the motor industry to produce non-suv type cars, more environmentally friendly transport? Rather than adding further tax to motorists!

Chris, Essex,

It's nothing more than an extra TAX on the motorists. Ken should have been chucked out for this most crazy tax, which has meant a big loss to the small businesses and shopkeepers from the passing trade. At the same time loads of small businesses have relocted to other outer regions, thereby creating more job losses within the charging zone. The sooner some sane guy comes in place of Ken and gets rid of this silly tax, the better for all.

Arvin, Hounslow, Middx

Livingstone is an old fashioned socialist who hates anyone who can afford a car. He just sees them as a source of revenue and a group to be hounded as much as possible

R Parkes, Tunbridge Wells, England

All this taxing of vehicles on our roads will all but kill off any hopes we may have had of having olympic champions in 2012.
who will be able to afford to use their own means of transport to take any future young prospect to the training sessions and competitions.
I certainly wont be able to afford to use my car to take my son and several of his friends to their youth football matches as i do at present. As team manager, I would have to give up the role as i do not have time to wait for public transport as the schedule on match and training days is very tight.
These taxes on car travel could be the death knell of, not only youth sport, but all sport at local levels.
It's about time the govt and Ken Livinghell gave us some tax breaks and incentives to help the people and youth of Britain to become world beaters in sport.
The opposite effect does not bear thinking about !

Martin Russell, Hayes, england