London c-charge changes miss big picture

The London congestion charge is set for a welcome New Year shake-up.

New rules due to come into force on 4th January will finally scrap the westward extension of the c-charge zone, freeing residents, businesses and travellers in Bayswater, Notting Hill, Kensington and Chelsea from the grips of the scheme.

The shrunken zone will stretch only from an Edware Road - Park Lane - Vauxhall Bridge Road boundary in the west to the current eastern boundary.

The change will fufill at last the election promise to scrap the western enlargement of the zone made by London mayor Boris Johnson, which was thought to be a major factor in his success over his repressive, money-grasping predecessor Ken Livingstone.

Economic boost

Thousands of people who enter the western zone, or who were forced to travel through it to access work, will save a fortune. This will very likely be spent instead on goods and services that both improve their lives and provide much-needed support for the businesses on which Britain's economic recovery depends.

For example, those who travel into or through the western zone three times a week at £8 a shot will enjoy an incredible saving of £1,248 per year.

Given that surveys estimate 60% of all journeys through the western extension originate outside the zone, that a third of western zone users admits to finding the c-charge hard to afford, and that a majority of local businesses blamed the c-charge for reduced profitability, the move will provide a welcome increase in income for particularly low- and average-waged households for whom public transport cannot meet their needs - as well as for local businesses.

Oppressive time limit tackled

A further beneficial development is the launch of a new 'Auto Pay' service, which records each visit into the zone made by cars that are registered for the service and takes a monthly payment.

This helps alleviate the outrageous situation in which, if you forgot to pay on the day of travel or the day after, you were hit with a massive £60 fine.

Quite how Ken Livingstone felt it reasonable or appropriate to put such a short time limit on payment of his 'toll tax' is beyond imagination, but reveals a great deal that's unappealing about that man's mindset.

I wonder how many people have already been grossly ripped off - and how much hard-earned cash has been robbed by officialdom as a result of brief distraction or forgetfulness - due to that particularly oppressive element of the scheme.

There are also changes to the exemption rules to link free access to the zone to a car's emissions rather than its alternative fuel technology. What Car magazine has published a handy list of winners and losers as a result of this change.

Charge to rise

But the news isn't all good.

While many people stand to be released from the impositions and costs of the scheme, those who still need to drive in the original central zone face charges that are being increased from a level that is already beyond reasonable or acceptable.

The daily charge to enter the zone will be hiked by £2, from £8 to £10 if you pay on the day you enter the zone and from £10 to £12 if you pay the day after - although you'll get away with £9 if you're registered for 'Auto Pay'.

Reality check

But all this discussion of tweaks to the c-charge overlooks the elephant in the room. It has not cut congestion.

Livingstone's scheme has been failing almost since the start. All at vast expense to the public, £340m of which - up to November 2009 - has been pocketed by the 'public administration' plc Capita for creating and running the system.

As far back as late 2007 and again in April 2008 there were warnings that the scheme was not reducing congestion in the c-charge zone.

Today, even TfL continues to admit that "sadly, congestion has risen back to pre-charging levels".

Though TfL goes on to claim, dubiously, that the situation would be worse without the charge and blames this outcome on "widespread water and gas main replacement works, which have greatly reduced the road capacity" and "Traffic management measures to help pedestrians and other road users".

Problems that clearly remain since April 2008, the second of which has been very much in TfL's gift to resolve.

Isn't it somewhat outrageous to charge people large sums for the benefit of driving in a supposedly reduced congestion area, just to make changes to other aspects of "traffic management" that have made congestion just as bad as it was before any charge was levied at all? How does TfL justify this behaviour and its continued right to charge car users anything at all?

Bus problem

Or perhaps those excuses are not the real problems contributing to the failure of the scheme at all.

The more likely reason, as we've previously blogged, is that Ken Livingstone wasted the c-charge income on a vast increase in bus numbers.

Anyone who has followed a bus through London will know the congestion and tailbacks even one causes while it negotiates London's crowded streets, spewing health-endangering diesel fumes, often with only a handful of people on board.

There are far too many, being subsidised at excessive public cost.

Congrats, but ...

So, Boris - congratulations for scrapping the western zone as you promised. A politician who keeps his promises is certainly not to be sniffed at!

But now its time to face facts. The c-charge isn't cutting congestion. It's just a massive extra tax on Londoners and a gift for paper-shuffling, public-harassing, penalty-charging officialdom.

It's time to rid London of Ken Livingstone's ridiculous and repressive congestion charging scam altogether.

Boris wobbles on c-charge pledge

The Evening Standard today splashes the news that London mayor Boris Johnson has 'shelved' plans to axe the western extended area of the city's congestion charge zone.

Scrapping the westward extension was a flagship pledge made during Boris's successful election campaign.

The repressive anti-car policies of his precedessor as mayor, Ken Livingstone, were said to be a major factor in his downfall from office.

The plan to scrap the western extension was greeted warmly by the overwhelming majority of businesses and residents in the area.

No surprise, given a large majority voted against the imposition of the extension in the first place, but were at the time completely ignored by Livingstone.

However, the idea that Boris has 'shelved' the plan - implying indefinitely - seems to be something of an overstatement.

While it does look like the pledge now will not be delivered "by 2010", as originally suggested, Johnson this afternoon rushed to confirm in no uncertain terms that the western zone will be removed "next year" - blaming "a number of tedious bureaucratic hoops" for the delay.

The confusion seems to have been caused originally by Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor's transport adviser.

Looking at his quote in the Standard, Ranger appears to have intimated that removing the western extension was merely an "aspiration" and that economic circumstances may now prevent it happening.

It's understandable how the Standard interpreted such political code as the plan being 'shelved'.

While removing the zone would cost TfL between £55 million and
£70 million in revenue, if the economy is a factor at all in the decision it is more a reason to scrap the zone as soon as possible than a justification for delay.

While TfL undoubtedly wants to cling onto that revenue, the reality is it comes out of the pockets of thousands of people likely already struggling to make ends meet in difficult times - money they could otherwise be spending in the shops and with local businesses also struggling to ride out the downturn.

Businesses themselves are hit twice by the c-charge, first by the reduction of passing traffic cutting visitors to their shops and second when their staff or delivery vans have to criss-cross the zone boundary and they have to pay the charge themselves.

So businesses in particular will not be at all happy at having to put up with the zone for potentially at least another year.

If Boris is going to maintain the great deal of goodwill he enjoyed at the last London election for his c-charge pledge, he'd better redouble his efforts to cut through that bureaucracy and get wielding his axe as soon as possible.

Progress in 2008 but new threats loom

If you're wondering why this blog has been so quiet for the last couple of months, it's down to a sense that 2008 offered a glimmer of hope that car users are turning the corner against overbearing politicians and repressive eco-mentalists.

Wishful thinking? Probably. Maybe the recent drop in fuel prices and the temporary delay of road tax hikes announced back in the Pre-Budget Report has gone to our heads.

Our last posting back in October heralded the start of the debate over congestion charging in Manchester. Thankfully the plan was rejected resoundingly by almost 80% of local voters.

This was despite the best efforts of the government and its BBC supporters to bribe locals with the promise of billions of pounds of spending on public transport projects.

These were projects than Mancunians justifiably thought should be provided anyway, paid for out of the considerable taxes they have already handed over to the government - rather than the billions of pounds extra that congestion charging would have cost them.

C-charging under fire

Of all the projects dreamt up by today's politicians - who seem to regard car users as cash machines they can raid repeatedly whenever they've wasted too much money elsewhere - congestion charging took the biggest kicking of 2008.

Some months before Manchester's triumph, the archdeacon of the anti-car lobby, Ken Livingstone, was ousted as mayor of London - having threatened a completely unjustifiable £25 daily charge that would have hit a wide range of normal family car users.

Livingstone spun the plan as designed to target those dastardly 4x4s that the eco-extremists seem to have an irrational obsession about. Irrational, given most 4x4s are no bigger, nor as gas guzzling than many mid-range family cars.

Spun out of office

Trouble was, anyone who could glance at a car magazine knew that targetting just 4x4s by emissions was impossible and that far more people were going to be financially slammed by the massive increase than Ken claimed. So Ken was kicked out.

A lesson there for all politicians about the dangers of over-confidence in the ability to spin a political agenda in the face of blatantly contrary facts.

His successor, Boris Johnson, has already consulted local people and pledged to scrap the westward extended area of the London zone.

Almost 28,000 took part in the consultation, of whom 67% and 86% of businesses supported the removal of the zone - similar numbers to those opposing its introduction in the first place, but whom Livingstone simply ignored.

The zone will be shrunk to its original central area by 2010, but given current economic circumstances local businesses and people are pushing for the toll to be lifted sooner.

Anyone listening?

While locally-based congestion charging faced an overwhelming public battering in 2008 - in addition to the 1.8 million people who signed a Downing Street petition in 2007 - road pricing has not yet been driven off the government's agenda.

What is it going to take for these people to get the message?

This year the Department for Transport will press ahead with trials for a pay-as-you-drive scheme that could see car users paying £1.30 a mile at the busiest times.

The basis of the idea is to ration road space rather than provide the necessary capacity or a viable alternative - an approach which, if applied to hospitals or schools, would cause uproar.

In addition to the democratic insult of ignoring repeatedly expressed public opposition to the idea, according to the Daily Express trails have already cost £10 million and the bill is only going upwards.

Rationing roads

The government line is that the trials are designed to "inform the work of those local authorities who are considering taking forward local congestion charging".

But what council would still seriously consider such a scheme after the fate that befell policy-makers last year in London and Manchester?

Naive defenders of pay-as-you-drive - such as some long established organisations purporting to represent the interests of motorists - seem to have the idea that if such a scheme replaces road tax, or if fuel tax is reduced, then drivers could benefit.

Leaving aside, as those organisations sadly do, the privacy implications of individual movement-tracking, does anyone seriously imagine that the government would implement a system costing billions of pounds if it wasn't going to rake in more money from us in the long term than whatever taxes it replaces?

Further moves towards road pricing look set to remain the biggest policy threat to the finances of car users into 2009. But, of course, authorities both national and local are already planning many other petty annoyances to hinder and frustrate the vast majority of car users for whom there is no viable alternative to life on the road.

More about those in another post.

Manchester C-charge debate kicks off

The battle over plans to introduce Britain's biggest congestion charge zone in Manchester have begun in earnest as opponents have hit out at the proposed referendum as unbalanced and incomprehensible.

Of particular concern is that the congestion charge is not even mentioned on the proposed ballot paper.

The referendum question reads: "Do you agree with the Transport Innovation Fund proposals?" - a reference to the £3bn package of public transport improvements promised to Manchester by the government in return for agreeing to implement a charge from 2013.

The Greater Manchester Momentum Group (GMMG), a business alliance that opposes the charge, said almost half Manchester's residents did not know about the plans, despite a 14-week consultation.

"We feel strongly that the current suggestion [for the referendum] is unbalanced and . . . would mean little to many people who don't even know about the consultation," a spokesman said.

"Transport Innovation Fund is jargon and would mean little to many people, who didn't even know about the consultation."

As we commented here on this blog back in June, when the government gave the nod to the scheme, it's bizarre that Manchester is considering introducing congestion charging at all given admissions in London that the capital's landmark scheme has failed to cut congestion, evidence that the average speed of traffic in London is dropping, not increasing, and the pending outcome of a public consultation on whether the western extension to the zone should be scrapped altogether.

That the government and Manchester authorities seem prepared to ignore the evident failure and unpopularity of the London scheme indicates strongly that milking yet more cash from the already over-burdened car user is the only real motivation behind the plan.

The Manchester scheme will include two charging rings, one just inside the M60 and the other around the city centre. Drivers would pay to cross each at peak times when entering in the morning and leaving at night, in contrast to London's catch-all scheme.

Dave Goddard, leader of Stockport council and an opponent of the scheme has also criticised the referendum question.

He said: "Electoral Commission guidelines say the question should be in language people can understand. People understand the congestion charge, they do not understand 'Transport Innovation Fund'."

For the plans to come into effect, seven of the 10 Manchester boroughs must agree. It is expected that Mr Goddard and the leaders of Trafford and Bury councils, who also oppose the congestion charge, will be outvoted at a meeting of Greater Manchester authorities next week that will decide the referendum question.

Ballot papers will be sent out next month and must be returned by post by December 11. Though the poll has no legal force, council leaders have agreed to abide by the result.

The man's on a roll

The Evening Standard reports today that London's new mayor Boris Johnson has scrapped Ken Livingstone's plan to hit 'gas-guzzlers' with a £25 congestion charge.

The news follows reports that, in September, Boris will consult the public on scrapping the westward extension of the zone.

According to the Standard, the High Court has confirmed today that the paperwork needed to end former London mayor Ken Livingstone's key policy had been completed.

Band G injustice

The scheme was due to change in October this year. But now there will be no increase in charge to £25 for drivers of Band G vehicles.

Band G doesn't just include expensive sports cars or 4x4s but many typical mid-size family cars, including estate cars and people carriers. So the £25 daily charge would have hit families the hardest.

Targetting Band G for excessively punitive charges would also have threatened the jobs of tens of thousands of people working in Britain's sports and executive car industry, by making their products financially unviable to run.

The discount for cars in Bands A and B, which would have resulted in thousands of cars driving into the zone for free and adding to congestion, has also been removed.

TfL study slammed plans

As we reported back in October, Livingstone's proposed changes to the congestion charge scheme were slammed by Transport for London's (TfL) own study into the plans.

Their Impact Assessment, authored by environmental consultants AEA, pointed out that not only would the effect of the changes be "an increase in cars moving within the zone" - defeating the purpose of an anti-congestion scheme - but that "Increased congestion would mean that all vehicles would move more slowly leading to increases in CO2 emissions."

Outbreak of sense

So Boris's actions are a welcome sign that he is being guided by the advice of experts in the best interests of limiting congestion and, therefore, emissions.

Rather than the pursuit of blinkered class warfare, or the twisted idea of a link between emissions and 4x4s exclusively, demonstrated by his predecessor.

TfL commissioner Peter Hendy said: "We will be working with the Mayor to strive to cut CO2 emissions from transport in London by promoting cycling and walking, encouraging people to drive in a more efficient way and by cutting Transport for London's own CO2 emissions."

Let's hope this new outbreak of sense in London starts to spread throughout the country. But what next for Boris? May we suggest another look at this.

Boris consults over scrapping C-charge extension

The new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced a public consultation on the future of the western extension of the congestion charging zone, which will include an option to "scrap it".

The news that the London scheme may be shrunk comes at a particularly inopportune moment for the government, as it continues to push for congestion charging to be introduced in other major British cities, like Manchester.

Criticising his predecessor's February 2007 expansion of the central London invisible toll scheme in the face of overwhelming local opposition, Boris Johnson says he has an "open mind" towards making changes and promises it will be "a genuine consultation".

The consultation will not be a 'yes/no' referendum on the extension but will include various options such as changing the hours of operation.

The plan will also include the carrying out at the same time of an attitudinal survey, factored to match the population of London as a whole.

Local residents and businesses will have a five-week opportunity to express their views on the westward extension, starting in September, with Transport for London particularly keen to hear from those within or on the borders of the extension.

Boris Johnson said: “This will be an opportunity for everyone with experience of the extension to tell me whether they want to see it removed, improved or if they are simply unmoved.”

Government gives go-ahead for Manchester C-charge

Transport secretary Ruth Kelly has in the last hour announced the government's support for the introduction of congestion charging in Manchester.

In the now classic style of Bungler Brown's government, the news comes despite recent admissions in London that the capital's scheme has failed to cut congestion, evidence that the average speed of traffic in London is dropping, not increasing and increasing pressure for the scheme to be shrunk.

Hardly the optimal moment to announce an expansion of the idea, even without considering financial factors like car users already being hammered by fuel prices and people generally feeling the pinch.

It would also be unwise for Manchester residents to assume that the initial charge of £5 for entering the zone would remain at that level for very long, or that the boundaries of the two-ringed invisible toll wouldn't soon shift from their initial positions in order to increase revenue.

A public consultation will now be held on the plan.

The government will provide £1.5bn to support the scheme, with the rest of the £2.8bn cost coming coming from the city authorities themselves.

Where the extra funds for the over-runs that inevitably blight major government schemes will come from is not clear, with local council taxpayers potentially having to foot the bill.

Responding to the government's statement, Theresa Villiers MP asked why three out of ten councils in Manchester oppose the plan.

Stockport, Trafford and Bury councils are no longer supporting the bid for funding and councillors in Bolton - where Ruth Kelly's own highly marginal seat is located - have promised to hold a public referendum on the issue.

Andrew Simpson, chairman of the Greater Manchester Momentum Group (GMMG) - a lobby group formed by major businesses opposed to congestion charging - said:

"It's right that we want improved public transport, but if the cost of that is something that's going to cost people in this region up to £1,200 a year to get to work, then I think that's going to be very bad for our jobs and our economy."

The group has support from major Manchester stores Harvey Nichols, Lookers and Makro, along with the owners of the Trafford Centre and a range of other business organisations.

In typical fashion, the scheme is being sold as a means to deliver 'a first-class public transport system'. Though where all the money Manchester residents - not least car users - have already stumped up in taxes has gone if not not towards providing just such a system is a more pertinent question.

Now we are expected to stump up even more from the public pocket in order to introduce a system that will hit car users with even more bills.

Is there no end to this government's greed for our cash? As ever, aimed first of all at soft-target car users who already pay far more in taxes to the Treasury than are spent on road transport improvements.

C-charge has not cut jams, admits TfL chief

According to today's Evening Standard, Transport for London's Michèle Dix - managing director of planning - has admitted that congestion in central London is back at levels last seen before the C-charge came into effect.

Speaking at a transport conference in London, she admitted that congestion has now returned to how it was before the controversial road-charging scheme was introduced.

But it seems she stopped short of apologising to car users for the vast cost of the failed scheme.

Confirming the conclusion of an earlier study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, Transport for London said the freed road space created by the 21% drop in traffic levels had been taken up by other road users, making congestion worse.

This is the first time TfL itself has publicly admitted to such a sharp rise in congestion in central London.

Ms Dix also revealed the extent to which public opposition to road tolls had made TfL think twice about extending the congestion charge zone to the capital's outer boroughs.

A petition on the Prime Minister's website calling for national roadpricing plans to be axed attracted a record-breaking 1.8 million signatories.

"It made government turn off charging, which has made it difficult for us," Ms Dix told the conference.

"If road-user charging was to be extended, we would have to make it more acceptable. We would have to improve public transport" she said.

Her admission serves as a major warning for any city considering introducing similar road-charging schemes - particularly those whose public transport system is thought to be less effective than London's.

The news also supports an Evening Standard survey conducted in February, and Department for Transport figures released last year, revealing that morning rush-hour traffic speeds had fallen to 9.3mph, below the 9.9mph recorded before the C-charge was introduced.

Paul Watters of the AA said: "It had become increasingly clear that benefits originally delivered by the charge were being eroded.

"Last year, TfL's own monitoring report said the initial 30% improvement in congestion had slipped to just 8% - now it seems even that gain may have gone."

Gordon Taylor of West London Residents' Association accused TfL management of "complete failure".

Same old traffic jams

The Evening Standard yesterday brought us an excellent article exposing the failure of London's 'landmark' congestion charge scheme.

Despite undoubtedly cutting car use in the zone (the only vehicles mayor Ken Livingstone ever likes to discuss), the latest Department for Transport figures have shown that average morning traffic speeds in London have now fallen to 9.3mph - well below the 9.9mph recorded before the congestion charge was launched in 2003.

That screams abject failure. But what's the reason for this strange anomoly?

The answer, Douglas McWilliams of the Centre for Economics and Business Research writes, is that lorries and, in particular, buses are now clogging London's roads.

He blames the fact that most transport experts use models that understate the congestion impact of large vehicles like buses in cities, like London, with narrow, congested streets.

So they miss the point that a charge that mainly targets cars will only do a limited amount to reduce congestion.

Buses clogging roads

Our roads, McWilliams suggests, are increasingly clogged up by more buses than there is either space or need for, with the infamous 'bendy' buses singled out for particular blame.

In Britain we have twice as many buses as in Germany, France or Italy. Apparently we have a fifth of all the buses in the EU!

And as we have said on this blog many times before, it's not as if buses are particularly environmentally attractive. For all the space they take up, they spend large parts of the time virtually empty. Over all services, from beginning to end of routes, the average number of passengers in a bus is just eight.

Since a bus does, on average, just 3.6 miles to the gallon, and since half of bus journeys would not be undertaken if the buses were not there, McWilliams has calculated that extra buses have about the same environmental effect as driving the passengers around in Bentleys.

This is Ken Livingstone's idea of traffic management.

Environment suffers

And what's his idea of helping the environment or public health? To fill London's streets with excess numbers of vehicles that, in the course of their operation, stand stationary for extended periods both blocking other traffic and spewing harmful diesel fumes in often densely populated areas.

TfL's excuse for the traffic slow-down is roadworks. But that conveniently ignores the fact that Livingstone prevented many roadworks schemes from happening just after the C-charge started, so as to give a misleading impression that charging had raised traffic speeds.

As McWilliams so rightly concludes: "Ken Livingstone's old-fashioned, anti-car policy has to be replaced with a more modern and flexible approach that allows for the fact that, for some people, cars are the only option. Without such a shift, we risk simply grinding to a halt."

If Livingstone is too stuck in his ways to do it, maybe we need a different mayor who will.

Official report slams CO2-linked 'congestion-charge' plans

A report published by Transport for London (TfL) has demolished the claimed benefits of Ken Livingstone's plans for emissions-based road charging.

Livingstone's latest not-so-bright idea is to switch away from charging cars simply for entering central London and over to charging according to their emissions, starting next year.

This will herald the conversion of the C-charge - originally sold to Londoners on the grounds of combatting congestion - into simply an additional emissions-linked road tax.

The key differences of the new scheme are that cars emitting up to 120g/km of CO2 will be able to enter London without charge - the aim being to encourage people to switch to such lower-emissions cars.

At the other end of the new charging scale, those with cars that emit more than 226g/km CO2 will be hit with a highly punitive £25 daily tax to enter the C-charge zone - and will also lose their current 90% 'residents discount' if they live inside the zone.

So any cars within this emissions bracket that 'live' inside the zone will become punitively and unreasonably expensive to move during the charging hours.

All cars with emissions in between will continue to be subject to the current £8 daily charge.

More cars = more emissions

However the TfL-commissioned Impact Assessement for the revisions, authored by environmental consultants AEA, has pointed out that not only will the effect of the changes be "an increase in cars moving within the zone" - defeating the purpose of an anti-congestion scheme - but that "Increased congestion would mean that all vehicles would move more slowly leading to increases in CO2 emissions."

So if the scheme is successful on Livingstone's own terms - encouraging people to switch to lower emissions cars - the result is clearly going to be more cars in central London, more congestion and ultimately more, erm, emissions.

Even the AEA report's best case scenario (before the congestion has a chance to start building) is a tiny reduction in CO2 emissions of "between 0.3% and 2%" for 2009.

The likelihood of more cars hitting the roads has been backed by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which recently revealed independent research showing the change in the C-charge rules would lead to 4,000-10,000 extra car users being tempted to drive in London.


Ken's class war

If Livingstone goes ahead with the revised scheme, regardless of such a projected failure to either curb congestion or reduce emissions, the real justification could only be that he simply wants to engineer a way to financially attack the owners of what he perceives as 'big' cars with that punitive £25 charge, because he thinks they're likely to be wealthy people.

In other words - another indicator that he's still prosecuting the same old class war that he has a long reputation for, but this time wrapping his plans in green and trying to invoke the 'emissions' bogeyman as justification.

But using car emissions to target the wealthy just doesn't work. Anti-capitalists trying to disguise their objectives by wearing green clothes, like Livingstone, don't realise it because none are remotely interested in cars and none have bothered to look at the facts.

Far from the hype, the upper emissions bracket which Livingstone intends to slam with the £25 charge and loss of the residents discount includes modest family cars like the 1.8l Skoda Superb, people carriers like the 1.8l VW Sharan, family saloons like the 2.2l Fiat Croma and medium-sized estate cars like the 2.4 Honda Accord Tourer and Mercedes-Benz C230.

Hardly the Chelsea 'gas guzzlers' or (gasp!) 4x4s that the likes of Red Ken and 'green' cronies seem to get so excited about. Rather, normal family transport that any family with a couple of kids is likely to need.


Car industry's green progress

The SMMT's Christopher Macgowan has countered these on-going efforts to slap excessively punitive taxes on car users by pointing out the considerable progress being made by the car industry to reduce the impact their products make on the environment.

In the last four years the industry has cut CO2 emissions by more than 36%, equivalent to 0.78 million tonnes, and average car emissions have fallen by 12% since 1997.

Doesn't London deserve a mayor who will act primarily in the interests of the city rather than in pursuing out-dated class war at any cost to hard-working families and reducing congestion?