The cost of this to the economy is very high, although there is not necessarily any agreement on how high. According to 'Green Light Group' of transport professionals, the cost to the UK economy by 2012 is expected to be £12bn per year. Values as high as £20bn/year have been mentioned in the past.
Equally, goes the argument, if car drivers were charged a variable amount of money, this would regulate the amount of driving taking place, and thereby stop congestion from happening at all, or so much.
Table 1: Theoretical benefits of congestion charging
Figure 2: The effect of congestion charging on London
... although it appears, as can be seen in Figure 3, that most of the reduction has happened in the off-peak period, whereas driving in the morning peak period hasn't fallen by much since 2002. A new peak period has been created by the ending of the congestion charging period in the evening. This suggests that many car drivers will absorb congestion charging as 'collateral damage' and continue to drive.
Figure 3: Traffic flows through London's congestion charge
... and as Figure 4 shows, it is not necessarily the case that the effects of congestion charging are permanent, and regression to the original situation can occur.
Figure 4: Congestion in the London congestion charging zone
Table 2: Theoretical solutions to externalities
Many people have to travel at a given time of day, for example, to be in work for a given time. This is a pity, since if some people could work from home, or travel at some time other than rush hour, as can be seen from Figure 1, the problem would disappear. Outside of the peak periods, there is plenty of spare capacity. At the moment car drivers would pay a congestion charge, when they otherwise would not have to. Oddly, the London Congestion Charge operates from 07:00 to 18:30, Monday to Friday, excluding the possibility of uncharged off-peak travel by car.
In principle, it is possible for people to use a non-car method of travelling. However, there may not be a good enough public transport service - the public transport in London is excellent, much less so outside of London. They may not wish to travel by bicycle, motorbike or motorscooter, or they may not be able to.
The car in question may be owned by a poor family, which has scraped together enough money to buy it, and thereby dramatically increased their standard of living - they may not have any more money for paying a congestion charge, nor could they see why they cannot use the car which they have struggled so hard for. At the same time, a wealthy single man can pay the congestion charge, with a bad grace, and continue to drive their car. Economically, this is rational - poorer people cannot afford a whole range of things - but it seems a poor reward for the family's attempts to better themselves. Informal evidence suggests that the congestion charge in London largely removed older, less expensive, cars from the road.
Many car drivers will continue to drive their car, paying the congestion charge. They already have a car, and thus need to use it in order to get their money's worth from this investment. Their lives may be built around a car, and therefore they feel that they need their car as part of their life-style. There may be, to their mind, no viable alternative. In a BBC poll recently, (as shown in Table 3), the cost of driving a car will have to be raised significantly before they will stop driving.
Table 3: BBC poll results
Some car drivers will give up their car, and use public transport instead. In an attempt to meet the stated preference of the car drivers in the UK - who say they would use the public transport if it was better - most of the money raised, after the costs of implementing congestion charging, goes into public transport. Although buses and trains are larger than cars, because they have many seats, the amount of congestion that each person causes on a bus is much lower than that of the same person in a car. Unfortunately, the revealed preference of car drivers - that they want better public transport so that other car drivers can use it - means that the extra investment in public transport will not help those car drivers who are still driving their cars, and paying the charge.
Finally, the car drivers may well decide to take their business elsewhere, where there is no congestion charge, as they are entitled to do so. This will damage the local economy.
The net result is shown in Table 4. Most people are worse off by using congestion charging. The car driver sees very little for the extra money that they pay, and the state is damaged by a loss of economic activity.
Table 4: Congestion charging - more realistic benefits
It's worth noting that in Norway, where they use congestion charging and road tolls, much more of the money goes into investment in roads, particularly roads which enable car drivers to get across the fjords without going through towns and cities en route.
Table 5: Alternative solutions to the externalities
Move the congestion out of town
Figure 5 shows two scenarios for a city. In Scenario 1, the first signal junction that inbound traffic meet is within the city boundary, labelled junction 'A'. In Scenario 2, an extra signal junction, labelled 'B' has been provided outside of the city boundary.
Figure 5: Scenarios 1 and 2
Inbound traffic arrives in large numbers at junction A in Scenario 1. Given that the capacity of the road exceeds the ability of the junction to let the cars through, a queue builds up back from the traffic lights. The queue stops buses getting quickly through the junction, and the idling engines of the cars cause pollution levels in the vicinity of the traffic signals to rise quickly.
In Scenario 2, the traffic is first stopped by the extra junction B. This is specially set up so that it has no higher a capacity than the original junction A. This causes the queue to build here instead, outside of the city. This leaves the road in the city clear of congestion, allowing urban buses to move quickly through the city, and taking the pollution out of the city. The extra set of traffic signals can have the signal timings remotely changed to match the situation. If congestion starts to build at junction A, then the capacity of junction B can be reduced to allow the congestion to clear. If the traffic levels drop during the off-peak period of the day then junction B can be opened right out. A traffic control centre can be built, which watches all of the critical junctions using CCTV, and which can also control the traffic signals.
The clever thing about this arrangement is that it imposes no costs on the car drivers. Their experience of congestion will be no worse than before. It is simply a more efficient way of managing the road space. It is an existing technique, which is sometimes used in a system called SCOOT. Here, the effect is achieved without the cost of implementing SCOOT.
Information
The current congestion charging system in London charges £8/day, or £1920/year. This is intended to deter car drivers from entering the congestion charging zone, and it has worked up to a point. However, this cost pales into insignificance when compared to the cost of running a car. The RAC calculates the average cost of owning a car at £5500/year (the best part of £10,000/year before tax for a standard rate taxpayer). Far too many people run their cars on their credit cards, treating every purchase as a sunk cost, and yet being surprised by their credit card bills. So many car drivers think that their car is much cheaper than public transport, by comparing only the cost of the petrol against the total cost of the public transport (Table 6), and treating all the other costs as sunk costs. How many families are struggling to pay their bills, despite a good income, because of the cuckoo in the nest parked on their driveway?
Perhaps someone should gently point this out.
Table 6: Comparison of typical costs
Remove Illegal Vehicles
There are currently 26 million cars on the road, of which 1.5 million , or 6% are illegal, because they don't have one or more of the following:
Removing these cars from the roads, would in and of itself, eliminate congestion in this country.
Yellow School Buses
Yellow school buses, the very image of US schooling,
are now being used in the UK. The advantages include:
School buses could also be improved by running them in a different way. Currently, each school has its own buses, but inevitably there is a limit to how many buses can be provided, the number of routes, and how frequently they can be run. Given that today parents can choose which school their children attend, it will be increasingly difficult to provide buses from close to every home to each school. A possible alternative approach is to instead link schools together by bus. Then the children only have to travel (probably on foot) to their nearest school, and then take the dedicated buses to their destination. This is shown in Figure 6. Not only is the number of buses reduced, and the frequency increased, but it also means that students can study in more than one school, for example, in order to take advantage of specialised facilities at a particular school.
Figure 6: Two different school bus arrangements
Walking Buses
An alternative to the yellow school bus is the walking bus. This involves parents and teachers escorting a line of children (usually of primary school age) to school, following a set route, and picking the children up along the way. 20-30 years ago in UK, children of that age walked to school by themselves, without requiring this level of supervision, and it appears to be mostly about addressing the fears of the parents. On the other hand, it appears to be successful, it is easy and inexpensive to provide, and if this is what it takes, then there it is.
Advertising
Almost all of the advertising on television and newspapers for travel around this country is for cars, with much less advertising for trains. There is very little for bicycles, motorbikes or motorscooters. The result is that the advertising stream in the UK is very much one-way, in the direction of cars.
Advertising, if it's any good, should be about more than just informing the consumer about the products on offer ("You're never alone with a Strand") - they should attempt to increase desire for the product. If in a regular basis, people are being told that they need a bigger, faster, more expensive car, then what effect does this have on the number of people who aren't driving a car?
It would seem that the government could help the situation by sharply controlling the amount and type of advertising surrounding cars.
Car Share Schemes
At the same time as the costs of owning a car are revealed, an alternative approach can be used. A car share scheme is a car-hire scheme, where the car can be hired for a set period. Unlike a conventional car hire business, the car can be hired from a dedicated parking space in the neighbourhood. It's just like the car driver owning the car, except that the car scheme vehicle is probably more modern (and cleaner!). As long as the car is not booked too often, it is a cheaper alternative to owning a car, and a more flexible alternative to hiring a taxi. Each car share vehicle can take six normal cars off the road.
Flexi-Time
At the moment, employers can decide to offer flexi-time or not, depending on their own preference. There appears to be no compelling reason why employees should not be entitled to work flexible hours. Exemption can be made for customer-facing members of staff, who need to be working in a shop, serving customers. However, many employees are brought into work at the same arbitrary time. When enough employees try to make the journey by car, the pattern shown in Figure 1 is the end result.
Working From Home
Most people have a computer at home these days, since the cost of owning one has fallen so dramatically. Despite this, many people end up driving into work, to sit in an office, in front of a different computer. The cost of providing the office imposes massive burdens on the business, making it less competitive. The employee, driving into work, contributes to congestion.
It would be better for everyone if the employee worked from home, at least some of the time. They may have to come into the office for meetings, and to interact with their colleagues, but this need not happen every day of the working week.
There are some problems with working from home, which would need to be addressed. Ergonomics is one - to ensure that the home office is set up properly, in a way which is not going to injure the employee by them adapting a poor posture. There is also the issue of licensing, since the employee's software on their own computer may partly be for non-commercial use only.
Support Other Forms of Private Transport
Despite the usual attempts by well-meaning governments to force car drivers out of their cars and onto public transport, there are alternative forms of private transport - bicycles, motorbikes and motorscooters.
It would be assumed that successive governments would have gone out of their way to ensure that every car driver would be able to safely move across to these alternatives. In fact, successive governments have worked as hard as possible to stop car drivers moving to bicycles or motorbikes. Instead, the urban speed limit should be reduced to 15mph or 20mph in order to encourage cycling. Attempts should be made to map out a future transport strategy.
Improve the junctions
There are opportunities to improve the junctions in the urban environment. In many cases, traffic signals can be added to give-way junctions, increasing the capacity and reducing the congestion. Equally, when traffic flows are light, there is no reason why the traffic signals should not be switched off. Also, as time progresses, the setup of the existing traffic lights drift away from the optimum timings. Traffic modelling software enables the transport planner to calculate when these improvements should be made.
One of the biggest improvements is for roundabouts. Roundabouts are usually designed using a program called ARCADY, from TRL. Although it is the market leader in the UK, it has had an unfortunate feature - because it doesn't take account of lane markings at the approaches to the roundabout, it is possible to design a roundabout on the computer which doesn't work at all on the ground.
For example, if there are two approach lanes, one straight ahead and one to the left, ARCADY will treat this as two lanes. However, if most drivers want to go straight ahead, there is in reality only one lane active. ARCADY will grossly over-estimate the capacity of the junction. The engineer has to realise that this has happened, and make a correction in their calculation. This correction is not always applied. Fixing a roundabout may just involve re-marking the lanes, which is essentially repainting some of the road markings with white paint.
Other Forms of Car Restraint
In addition to the above measures, there are other forms of car restraint. A Workplace Levy is a tax on car parking at work, although there is an opportunity for the company to charge car drivers more proportionately to their income, and indeed to pay employees not to drive their car to work - a more positive approach. This scheme doesn't damage the income of local shops, nor does it impose a cordon on the locality that car drivers do not want to cross.
At the same time, it is worth pointing out that not every car is equal. The first car that a family owns enables them to get around more easily, to take the family out on trips, to collect heavy items from the shop - in fact a whole multitude of activities. It is a major boost to the quality-of-life of the family.
Successive cars achieve a lot less. They are just extra vehicles to move one person about, because the person is going in a different direction.
If this theory is correct, then it means that the restraint should apply to the second and successive cars, not the first one. So, the first car is a given. The second car is possible (parking permitting) with a payment, of possibly twice the value of the existing VED - in order to deter unnecessary ownership of the second car. The third and fourth cars are prohibited. This would maintain most of the quality-of-life of the family, whilst greatly reducing the numbers of cars in the country. This is more effective than the congestion charge, as cars are definitely removed from the roads. It is also more equitable than the congestion charging scheme. However, this approach would be a last resort, since if the pressure for car ownership is still present, then people will try to exploit any and every loop-hole that they can find.
