1. "towards green issues and away from actual congestion charging."

2. "The mainstream charge remains the same"

nuff said.

I'm just waiting for the day when I can get from Earl's Court to Canary Wharf without a signal failure or other delays. Also waiting for the day when the tube cars are properly cleaned and get air conditioned. And when a montly pass for zones 1 and 2 costs less than leasing a _decent_ car. And when it's not the goddam buses causing 90% of the congestion in Central London. I think there are about 8 million people that could continue my rant.

point is, charge car drivers when fucking public transport is AFFORDABLE and WORKS - in other words, when it's a convenient alternative.

Has anyone mentioned these changes to the people that still have jobs in Solihull?

>The punitive £25 charge applies to pre-2001 cars

So if you can't afford a new car they'll tax you to death.

Forget the massive emissions of manufacturing new cars, lets force everyone to join the throw away society.

Can someone please explain why this is a "green" policy

Black helicopter coz some manufacture has got to be funding someone here.

"the mayor has just given the green light for richer people to buy smaller cars "

So, what's wrong with that?

Richer people can afford to pay more tax, OR to buy smaller cars, but if they CHOOSE the greener option despite being able to afford a bigger car, surely that's a POSITIVE result ?

"In another green-policy shift, it was also announced that the congestion charge exemptions for hybrids (including the Toyota Prius)"

What's green about a car that gets 30mpg, and is full of lead acid batteries?

Carbon tax? Well then, that's a good thing. Put their money where their mouths are, and then the houses of parlement can pay all our taxes.

Putting a punitive tax on older cars doesn't make sense. Scrapping an old car and manufacturing a new one creates far more pollution and CO2 emissions than keeping the older car running. The pre-2001 car could be equipped with a much newer, fuel-efficient engine.

I think it could be quite fun to buy or hire a bunch of older, very large (preferably US) cars that also belch a bit and drive in and out of central London. If they have a decent foreign registration (for instance, an Arab plate which the TfL OCR will choke on) there isn't a chance in hell they'll ever be able to charge them, and as demonstration it's quite functional.

Am I not green? Actually, I am, but I'm fed up with the environmental terrorism that alleges to try and save the planet whilst wasting the money required to get decent transport that would go quite some way to alleviate the problem. Why does London still have so many unsynchronised roadworks? Wasn't that the Grand Plan for London getting a Mayor again? How much is wasted by maintaining those perimiter scans? Why is Ken's own department blowing so much on taxis (and on useless consultants)? Why does London Underground overcharge customers surrepticiously via Oyster? Why is London Underground staff actively barred from talking about the Customer Charter refunds for excessive delays, and why has that refund been made so difficult (and hidden - a survey of 32 brochures identified one single sentence in one brochure only, and no explanation)?

No, the real motivation appears to be simply the increasing milking of a population that no longer has a choice but needs cars to escape the heaving mess called London Underground. And the Greens are happy to play along - until there is a child that has to go to hospital, or there is a need to shop for new sandals.

Yeah, Ken is Labour alright. Consider getting rid of him a good exercise for ditching New Labour later. There is no reason for the UK to go as rapidly downhill as the US, but I digress.

So there. I'll take my medicin now ..

Incidentally, stick "LUL" (London Underground Limited) in Google language tools and let it translate from Dutch to English..

I'll have the seal fur lined Hummer jacket, thanks.

Yes, there's the flag-waving Prius, but there's also the diesel MINI, which is in fact even more economical than the Prius (72mpg to 65mpg) while churning out the same 104g/km of CO2. Oh, and the diesel 1-series, which sneaks under the bar at 119g/km. Good news for estate agents everywhere, then.

I'd like to see gubbmints and environmental advocates get serious and start producing 'dust-to-dust' environmental impact statements on every model of every manufacturer's cars. I would expect that some (many?) of the materials used in so-called 'green' cars would far offset the measured-at-the-exhaust-pipe benefits they're supposed to provide.

Ah well, a scandal waiting for its future television documentary.

Nice one Ken.

To the polluting whingers - to paraphrase that nice Mr Tebbit - get off your fat arses and onto your bikes perhaps? Or God forbid you City types actually have to get on the bus like the rest of us proles.

Absolutely right! Too many ostriches commenting here. Even the conservatives who claim to be green admit that traffic in London is down 21% and as a cyclist, walker and tube user I fully support this increase. £8 is nothing to people who spend almost that much on a croissant and coffee every day...

To the poster who wants airconditioning on the tube, well there was a competition to win 100k if you could come up with a way of cooling the tube....and none of the brains of Europe could come up with something. When you have the worlds oldest underground, others are bound to learn from your mistakes and omissions. 10m people come into London everyday and a lot of them use the underground. The system is old but it works. Sure there's crowding but hey, its a big city. A reality check is required...

Carrot and Stick - progressive politics...

Just noticed that my Focus ST 2.5 creeps in under the super-charge with emmissions at 224g/km. No £25/day for me..

Even less chance of paying once I consider that I am actually in Birmingham, with no congestion charge of any kind imposed. I then consider that 'round here has considerably higher rates of car ownership than London, and ponder 'why are there not huge traffic jams all day'?

Oh yes, that'll be because the locals have invested in a few roads now and then- I would advise Ken to do the same (not that it will happen in a month of sundays, of course).

A basic lesson in economics for the green morons. The City of London and financial services contribute 25% of total UK tax. PSBR is rising, and with that we are likely to see rises in interest rates and falling values of the property sector outside london as well as within it. Anything which makes London more efficient and more attractive to financial services benefits the entire UK economy through influx of capital, tax revenue, job creation, etc - check out Germany, where property prices have stagnated for 14 years as a result of inflexible labour markets, excessive regulation and lack of a financial centre to compete with London.

Anything, and i mean anything, which lessens London's attractiveness as a financial centre, and this includes Red Ken's idiotic "congenstion/pollution/wait no lets just try to tax the rich more" taxes, as well as the equally moronic non-dom proposed taxes, is going to have the medium term effect of making London less attractive. And do all you whiners want to know what the impact on the UK economy of that repatriation of taent, taxes, and capital will be? see earlier point on Germany in case you didnt get it.

Red Ken was elected as he was viewed as non-political and pro-London. This latest sign of his lack of a handle on what drives the London and UK economy are hopefully enough to assure that he will not be re-elected. All you whiners complaining about City fat cats obviously dont realise that wihout said fat cats you dont get 300% house price appreciation in a nation with 85% home ownership - instead you get 0% house price appreciation and 40% home ownership (again see Germany point earlier).

NB Red Ken also mentions in the press release that these measures are the "initial" steps...i have heard from inside TFL that the plan is to move it to 7 days a week, and apply to all cars based on the emissions shown at MOT rather than on purchase, hence trashing the second hand car values of all vehicles anywhere close to the 225g/km limit on purchase.

Let's put an end to this nonsense. London is becoming the ultimate Orwellian state, run, ironically, by a chippy Commuist who disguises his redistributive urges as congestion then pollution driven.

If Red Ken is so keen to posit that 2/3 of eligible £25 tax payers will stop driving, why does his over-staffed department not hazard a guess as to the number of cars below 120g who will decide to drive in given that it will be i) free ii) cheaper to park, and iii) the resale value of v small vehicles is likely to be assured? and if therefore, as i suspect, congestion will, in number of vehicles, be the same....what have we achieved?

It has been said before, but the way to reduce congestion is to improve the quality and cost of alternatives. Do something about the tube you stupid moron and stop making London less efficient for the highest rate taxpayers.

"10m people come into London everyday and a lot of them use the underground. The system is old but it works."

Clearly you either have:

a) a different definition of "works"

or

b) a vastly higher tolerance of filth and overcrowding

than me. London Underground is a creaking, vastly overpriced, wreck unfit for purpose. I think you are the one in need of a reality check. I'm fully expecting London Underground to buckle under the increased usage the pointless 2012 Olympics will place on it. I'm all for the Olympics as long as the hosts can host it properly, pity London is woefully unequipped to do so.

The so-called Congestion Charge is nothing more than a scam for making money for a mayor who shreds documents so we can't read what he gets up to under the Freedom of Information Act. London never needed a mayor and the last thing it needed was Ken as mayor. I'll be voting Boris, at least he says things before his brain kicks in to censor him and thus ends up remarkably honest for a politician.

Another point that I must make but will be ignored like all the others is that public transport simply is not the answer for many. No matter how reliable, clean and cheap they could (let's be honest this is a hypothetical situation) make it. It is still utterly unusable for some people.

I offer up myself as an example (ignore your prejudice about people justifying their use of cars and read the damn argument). I normally drive to work in a decently efficient car (45mpg/155g/km isn't the best but I feel shit loads safer and more comfortable in my car than the super-low emission cars on athe motorways which I have to drive regularly) and it takes 25 mins to get to work. Due to an eye injury, I am currently unsafe to drive so I don't (wish more people realised this sort of thing). I am condemned to using public transport which takes 2 hours, yes more than 4x as long, IF AND ONLY IF EVERYTHING IS WORKING PERFECTLY. Which it never does.

My time is valuable to me and I don't need to waste 3 hours a day commuting by train. Even if the trains were perfect and cheaper than driving, I would still drive until my employer increases my net salary by 3/8 to compensate for the additional time I'd waste on work-related activity. If I had kids, I would want to spend time with them so getting home after 8 pm after a 2 hour commute would simply not be a remotely acceptable option. I live 8 miles from my place of work FFS, I could bloody nearly WALK that in 2 hours!

Narrow dedicated motorway lanes with 120mph speed limits for motorcycles. Get Harley-Davidson to run ad campaigns for prestige bikes and see what happens. Who knows, arriving at work in leathers may become trendy...

...and yes I know - its Ken's way of raising money and has nothing to do with either CO2 or congestion.

I have a diesel Citroen C2, and it comes in at 109g/km so I'm way under. I just had a renewal notice for my car tax too, and because of that it's £35 for the entire year.

I'm sure I haven't lived in London for as long as some people but I still feel that it is long enough to comment on Mr.Livingston's practices.

The whole of TfL is broken, since I came here I've seen the prices for a bus day-pass become the price for a single (if you have an Oyster) and almost impossible to buy since they wont sell you one on the bus. Saver tickets have been abolished, making it harder for casual visitors to travel cheaply and all this with no improvement of the system. All the sign posts lie, 8-12 minutes ... never. You wait for at least 20 minutes and then 3 of the damned things turn up and there is still no place to sit. The tube is ridiculously expensive and the Oyster system is like flushing your money down the toilet, and woe betide you if you are in a hurry and you decide to leave the tube via your point of arrival because the train didnt come, they'll slap you with a penalty charge for the pleasure of waiting on their platform. There are no bins in the whole system supposedly a counter terrorism measure and yet in Madrid where for years home-grown terrorism from ETA was a risk there have always been bins regularly placed on the platform helping to keep the whole system a bit more bareable. In fact the new Madrid underground system is a fantastic model for what we should have in London, and apart from the new extensions it was all done in a very old network much like alot of the London lines, its all air-conditioned and you can walk all the way up and down a train if you cant find a seat in the carriage you are in, its fantastic.. not only that but it is on time (and a hell of a lot cheaper!!)

And as for car ownership, it is a total farce.. the merry armies of council parking wardens with their quotas only adds insult to injury, half the spaces in the borough are supposedly removed for some building work (which never seems to materialise after months), this itself is supposed to cost some £360 per week, resulting in a shortage of spaces for the mass of cars across the place, meaning more fines and clamping fees which go straight into the councils pocket and they do nothing to alleviate the parking situation, at the very least they should only give out permits for the number of spaces that exist in the borough and it would help everyone of people were 'perusaded' to only have 1 car per household. The congestion charge is equally wrong, the taxis and buses stink far worse than anything else in London, i'd like to see their g/km ratings. frankly the simplest thing would be to ban all cars that dont comply to euro 4 emissions criteria from central london, with a euro 3 ring a bit further and euro 2 to the m25, no matter what size or weight of vehivle, but of course this doesnt actually make anyone any money except in the fines of people who are found to flout the ban.

anyway I've had enough of this rant, it just makes me angry, London is such a great city which is totally ruined by its infrastructre so I'll be moving soon.

maybe when I'm due to retire it will be fixed again.

certainly i would never vote for Mr.Livingston to be mayor.

As long as the previously mentioned gadget that will determine the distance between my car-boat and the ground on which we used to walk is included as standard, drivers won't give a fuck about the environment. After all what would you choose? Less driving or some fancy gadget that can predict the height required for your house stilts?

Besides, surely the penguins will revolt and deep-freeze the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with able assistance from mutinous monkey butlers, and an alliance with the fleets of (low emission) robot deathbots.

I give the human race another 10-15 years before the AI that controls the roving air-fleet of robot war machines decides we are the single largest threat to the world, and subsequently eradicates us all.

All ground-based vehicles, together with their human masters, will be incinerated by robotic petrol pump attendants, and any attempt to flee will be curtailed by legions of satanic vacuum cleaners and portaloos.

And you lot are worried about paying a few extra quid to drive through London, fools the lot of you. The apocalypse awaits, and no amount of pandering to the machines by fifth columnists like Ken Livingstone can avert our eventual doom.

No. The Muridae family would not enjoy the change in (underground) climate at all. The LU is the only system I have seen that provides for the perfect environment for rattus rattus.

If you don't think so, you haven't been to New York, Madrid, or a score of other places. I think NYC is the best demostration - fares are half (no surprise there, everything else is too), all lines are four tracks, so that they can run all night and still do maintanance, and the cars are air conditioned, even if old. The trains are longer, larger, and handle more people - in short, it is just more industrial-strength. That is what London would really, really need to move people onto mass transit in large numbers.

But my favorite TfL message had to be this past weekend, when the loudspeaker was shouting at us to notify that "planned engineering works" had basically crippled most of the western tube lines towards Hammersmith, AND YET there was still a "staff shortage" on the remaining lines, further crippling westbound service. And after nearly a half hour wait in Shepards Bush, we finally got a train...

And oh yes, Ken is an idiot...never mix your policies, they always have unintended consequences. If you want to stop congestion, have a congestion charge...if you want to enforce CO2 emissions, have a well-defined tax for that. But mixing is always a bad idea...just like during a long night at the pub. This will be a disaster, unavoidably...

Cars in general have no place in London, so why not lower that limit to something like 20g/km. SUVs are pointless, especially within London, but so's a lead filled Prius that does 30mpg. Spend your money on a pushbike, scooter, motorbike or public transport instead. Don't be so bl**dy selfish.

Go Ken!

You London complainers have NO IDEA how fucking good you have it. You should try getting from A to B by public transport in ANY OTHER British city. It's practicaly impossible. A fiver for unlimited travel in zones 1-3, with a network that actually lets you get where you need to go? People in other cities would bite your hand off, stuck as they are waiting for buses that never come, paying £2.50 to go a mile and a half and then walking the rest of the way because the bus doesn't go anywhere useful.

You miserable, whinging fools.

Has it occurred to Red Ken that by changing his taxation policies to encourage the use of low-CO2 diesel vehicles he will be vastly increasing the particulate pollution in London? It's already a filthy city, this will make it worse. Not to mention the asthma problems... Sadly his Red Roots are showing: to hell with comfort and health, the people must conform.

I have a 4X4 in london, not that i use it much there, mainly it's because my parents live in a rather inhospitable part of the country that requires a high and 4-wheel drive to get to, also trains dont run saturday or sunday and there's a £60 each way cab from station to 3 miles from their house...no 4X4 cabs so they wont go up the track. I do about 600 miles a month outside London but spend an hour and half getting to work in london...i could drive it in 40 mins but choose a bus instead. After several people being mugged and thrown into the canal, i wont cycle anymore to work. I am charge exempt as I have a blue badge yet still dont use the car unless I really have to...parking, traffic, rose sellers all put me off. Some people do need a vehicle like I have, many alas buy them as they are cheap...a £40k range rover at 5 years old will cost less than a new fiesta..also many of the "youth" drive them as status symbols to their gangs, uninsured i can tell you too. CO2 output is as much mileage orientated as engine efficiency so still tax on fuel is the answer, cant hide from it then can they...also a prius isnt as good as they say....what cost new batteries every 4 years? cost of disposal of the old ones? they seem keen NOT to put that in their siny ad's. Ken has done a GLC again, making his own little kingdom of London.

So, obviously, congestion is no longer a problem in London...........

Even if they turned every street in London into a cycle lane there STILL would be a problem......too many buses. Maybe they should put a £25 charge on these too.

Unfortunately, it looks like you missed the rest of the quote from Ken. What he actually said was:

"Nobody needs to damage the environment by driving a gas-guzzling Chelsea tractor in central London, or by flying himself and 30 mates to an autocratic communist state in South America for a jolly. Oh wait, er... scrap that last bit. Erm... yeah, just stick to the bit about Chelsea tractors. And see if you can get it on the front page of the 'papers, save us having to actually discuss the issues"

Can we have an evil Ken icon please?

Who says that 300% increase in house prices is good - all it does is stop us poor chumps who's wages have gone up 2.x% from buying a house, but I suppose you don't really give a rat's ass as you can make even more money by buying the house I would have and renting it to me...

And before you call me a green whiner, if I'd a patio heater I'd leave it on permanently just to annoy the environmentalists who seem to have missed more than a couple of important points.

"Even if they turned every street in London into a cycle lane there STILL would be a problem......too many buses."

In the peak hour, one bus takes the place of 69 cars. Buses aren't part of the problem, they are part of the solution.

Think about it. Go on. Try, at least ;o)