My question is, how can congestion immediately outside the congestion charge zone be avoided?
The Mayor: We are spending the best part of 100 million on road works to ensure that we do not get a huge rat-running exercise – blocking off the potential for people to rat-run. We do not want the 10% to 15% of people that we assume will not drive in because of the congestion charge to be displaced elsewhere. No one has done this before. The scheme grew up in Singapore, and a few cities in the Nordic countries have tried it on a small scale, but no one has tried it on a city like London, which was not built for the car in the first place. Questioner: It won’t work, Ken. The Mayor: All our advice is that it will work, but until someone tries it, we will not know. I might be wrong. Questioner: Look at Oxford Street: you have no cars there, and it is blocked. The Mayor: Oxford Street is a huge main artery, and it is one of the areas where we will consider stopping everybody driving down there, and just having a tram that goes backwards and forwards on it. That is one of the options to lo
