The London congestion charge zone will be halved after Boris Johnson, the Mayor, decided to abolish the western extension introduced last year by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone.

The decision follows a bitter dispute between the mayor and senior officials in his transport authority, who accused him of ignoring the benefits of the £8 daily charge and acting on a flawed public consultation.

Transport for London will lose £70 million per year in income from the scheme. All profits went to public transport and fares are likely to rise.

The extension, covering Kensington and Chelsea and part of Westminster, will remain until spring 2010 as legal procedures are completed.

Mr Johnson said he was acting on the results of TfL’s consultation, in which 67 per cent of the 24,800 individual respondents and 86 per cent of businesses that responded wanted the extension to be abolished. Many responses were co-ordinated by campaign groups, such as the Friends of Portobello, which was concerned at the loss of trade to the new Westfield shopping centre, just outside the charging zone. It emerged last night, however, that another survey had found more people wanted to keep the £8 charge in some form than scrap it.

In its report on the consultation, TfL said it had commissioned an independent survey of 2,000 Londoners because “consultations can tend to over-represent those with strong opinions or who feel most directly affected by the issue”. The survey found that 41 per cent wanted the charge removed but 45 per cent wanted to keep it. Asked why he was ignoring the survey, Mr Johnson said: “The consultation was about as scientific as you can get.” He said he supported the original central zone, which would be unchanged. Mr Johnson would make up the £70 million shortfall from the “abundant economies to be found in TfL’s £8.2 billion budget”.

Mr Johnson plans to tackle congestion by adding one or two seconds to the green phase for traffic lights. TfL admitted that air pollution would rise slightly inside the western area. Jenny Jones, Green Party member of the London Assembly, said: “This is bad news not only for pedestrians and cyclists, but also for anyone travelling in London and everyone who breathes London’s air.”