Boris Johnson yesterday warned that the congestion charge must be raised or changed to combat growing traffic gridlock.
He said his successor as London mayor would have to increase the £11.50 fee or introduce “smart charging” at peak times if they wanted to implement key pledges such as pedestrianising Oxford Street.
Johnson said “doing nothing” was not an option, with road delays worsening, London’s population increasing by 10,000 a month and cheaper fuel attracting people back into cars.
Traffic delays are up 13% in two years, average speeds in central London have fallen to 7.4mph and more than 13mn passengers have deserted the bus network this year due to the “unprecedented” scale of roadworks, the Standard revealed. Pan-London speeds are at a new low of 16.5mph.
Transport for London admitted that its own cycle schemes and safer junction improvements, work by utility firms, developers and councils plus the impact of 25,000 Uber minicabs had led to “increased amounts of congestion”.
This has caused the long-term reduction in delays — seen since ex-mayor Ken Livingstone introduced the congestion charge in 2003 — to go into reverse, with central London traffic now moving more slowly than before the C-charge was introduced.
Last year former chancellor Lord Lawson claimed that the construction of the Victoria Embankment cycle superhighway was “doing more damage to London than almost anything since the Blitz”.
Johnson predicted Tory mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith or Labour’s Sadiq Khan will have to “go further” in encouraging cycling to get people out of cars and free road space for “essential business and commercial vehicles”. Road delays cost the London economy £4bn a year.
The mayor said: “Doing nothing with the roads would not return us to some never-existent Fifties Elysium of free-flowing traffic. Doing nothing would mean that congestion gets worse than it is now.”
In a paper setting out his cycling legacy, he added: “The city of London wants to close Bank junction to all traffic except buses and bikes. Both front-running candidates to be next mayor have proposed the closure of Oxford Street, and the part-closure of Parliament Square has also been mooted.
“For these things to happen, central London traffic will need to be lower than it is now. How that happens — perhaps by raising the congestion charge, perhaps by making it smarter — will, I predict, occupy my successors in the years ahead.”
Dr Rachel Aldred, senior lecturer in transport at Westminster University, said: “London is at a decision point. Traffic has started to increase again. There is a need for bold policies. In the late Nineties and early 2000s, the bus priority scheme and expansion of footways made a really big difference. Maybe we have come to the end of those benefits and we need to do something more radical.”