My sis is working on this stuff as part of a transport consultancy thing.
The £1.43 is newspaper rubbish to get people jumping up and down. Even if there were charges that high, they would be on very short stretches that have awful traffic and really need it. Don't believe the BS out there that you'll be paying that much every mile for an entire 100 miles on the motorway... it's to reduce congestion, so you're only likely to rack up a higher than average cost if you specifically use the most congested routes, and then you'd expect to see a decent reduction in the congestion as a payoff for it.
Sadly she says bikes (almost certainly but not 100% definite) won't be completely exempt, but they can expect to be on a reduced rate, seeing as the main drive has switched to congestion and not mileage/pollution and bikes don't cause as many congestion problems.
And it's still 8 years away. At least.
|