On 05/11/2018 11:52, John Williamson wrote:
On 05/11/2018 11:27, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
11:03:34 on Mon, 5 Nov 2018, David Cantrell
remarked:

Wrong. The aim should be to reduce *pollution*, not to reduce polluting
vehicles. What's worse, a hundred polluting vehicles entering the zone
once a year each, or a single polluting vehicle entering every day?
Obviously the latter.

Changing it to "reducing the number of polluting *trips*" encompasses
both ideas, but still shows that its the regular commuters/deliveries
rather than people visiting Auntie Flo on her birthday who need to be
discouraged.

Something that might help somewhat, and would be virtually free to
implement,would be to make the congestion charge apply 24/7 rather than
just on weekdays.

No - because that doesn't affect multiple journeys for the same vehicle
on the same day.

Arguably it should be e.g. £5 per journey, £10 for the most polluting
vehicles (and maybe an even higher figure for e.g. certain lorries), and
£2 for those that are emission free at the tailpipe (as they are not
entirely polluting free in general and there still needs to be an aspect
of congestion charging). A journey could be classed as passing through
the congestion charge boundary inbound (with an exception that twice
within a very short time was obviously due to a circuitous journey).
Have an upfront charge to register and prove intent, and then bill in
arrears electronically (probably paying back the registration fee).

I'd also have a punitive fine for vehicles left with their engines
running, whilst parked up, anytime and anywhere in London - ie make it
worth collecting as well as painful to pay.

Personally I'd be more than happy to pay that, and to pay any loading on
occasional big deliveries or similar, ditto for taking taxis (although
I'd look for emission free at the tailpipe versions!).