THE congestion charge in London rises by 60 per cent to £8 today but the increase is expected to make little difference to traffic levels.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, is imposing the increase largely because he will make an additional £35-45 million in annual profit. The mayor has admitted that the £3 increase will prompt only a small number of drivers to switch to public transport.

The vast majority will continue to drive into the charging zone and their weekly congestion charge bill will rise from £25 to £40.

Mr Livingstone promised two years ago not to raise the charge for at least a decade. He also stated, in November 2003, that “the issue of the congestion charge is not about raising money”. But after being re-elected last summer, Mr Livingstone announced that he wanted to raise extra money by increasing the charge.

He admitted the £5 charge was still proving highly effective in deterring drivers and had cut the number of cars by far more than he had anticipated. Traffic is still falling inside the charge zone. Car numbers fell a further 7 per cent last year and the only significant increase in traffic has been in the numbers of buses and bicycles.

Mr Livingstone has claimed that the £8 charge will result in a significant further fall in traffic. But Transport for London said it expected the increase to reduce traffic by as little as 2 per cent.

Since its introduction in February 2003, traffic inside the zone has fallen by 15 per cent. With the £3 increase, the reduction on pre-charging traffic levels is forecast to be between 17 and 21 per cent.

Mr Livingstone admitted in February that the extra revenue was part of the reason for imposing the increase. He told the London Assembly: “It all helps. Of course it’s useful to have that income.” Drivers are still waiting for London to keep a commitment to introduce an automated payment system under which drivers would no longer have to remember to pay the charge, but would have it deducted automatically from a pre-paid account when their numberplate was detected.

The technology already exists to allow this and is used to charge operators of large fleets of vehicles.

More than 5,500 drivers receive £100 penalties each day, mostly because they forget to pay or because of inputting errors when making daily payments. A survey of drivers by London First, the pro-congestion charging business lobby group, found that 37 per cent had paid a fine in the past year.

Almost two thirds (64 per cent) said they would switch to an automated payment system if it were available. But TfL said the system would be introduced at the earliest in 2009, after the expiry of Capita’s contract to handle enforcement. A TfL spokesman said it would be too complicated to renegotiate the contract before then.

Motoring groups suspect the real reason Mr Livingstone does not want to allow automated payments is that the profits from the scheme would slump. Drivers paid more than £72 million in fines last year.

Mr Livingstone has also ignored requests to allow drivers an extra day to pay the charge. Drivers incur a £100 fine if they forget to pay before midnight. The RAC Foundation said today’s increase would erode public trust in the principle of congestion charging and undermine the Government’s plans to introduce it on roads across the country.

David Holmes, chairman of the foundation, said: “There is no justification for this swingeing increase, which will have only a marginal impact on congestion. It was not introduced to cut congestion, but is an ill-disguised method of raising more revenue from motorists.”