OK, so this is a hot topic in Cambridge, what are your thoughts on the proposed congestion charge for Cambridge city?
My personal opinion is that I’m not opposed to a congestion charge, I just don’t think that the proposed plan is a fair or good solution. As we can all appreciate, traffic in Cambridge is very busy and that something needs to be done. We do have a great Park & Ride infrastructure, but some of the other bus routes could do with improving. I personally use the P&R occasionally and it works for me, but I know some people that need to take multiple busses to get across the city.
I live in the proposed zone, however I am right on the edge and I work outside of Cambridge so I will be paying to leave Cambridge!!!
Also, as an EV owner I appreciate that all cars cause congestion and this isn’t an environmental push.
This proposal, to me, seems an easy cash cow for GCP, it is being implemented for week days only, so affecting people travelling to work and by excluding weekends it is not going to affect people coming to Cambridge for tourism and shopping which adds to the congestion!
On the one hand, as a cyclist/train commuter I’m very much in favour of this, but I appreciate that’s because there’s no cost to me supporting this.
On the other hand, I worry about ending up with a situation like Bristol. People are livid with the council there over the ULEZ. My parents visited recently and got over £200 in fines they never knew existed.
I think the main point is that the implementation needs to be correct. Any charges should be reasonable, predictable, and easily avoidable through a healthy supply of alternative transport links. Cities like Cambridge could provide a template for reducing congestion in similarly sized towns across the country, so it’s important that they get this right.
I’m a big supporter of the GCP plan, but recognise that it has some serious problems.
Primarily it’s an attempt to solve one problem (congestion, car dominance) with another solution: new funding.
The trouble here begins (as it does with so many things) with Tories starving the cities financially. We need better transit infrastructure to support people getting out of their cars, but there’s no cash to do it, so we create a congestion charge and use that money. That’s why it feels like a cash grab: because it is.
However: what most people don’t know is that this was coming regardless. The petrol tax revenue is drying up and nationally, governments are looking at doing this everywhere to compensate. On top of that, cars are wildly subsidized by all levels of government in the form of road maintenance, parking, air quality, noise pollution, and straight-up deaths, so a £5 charge is actually a correction rather than the abuse some have tried to suggest.
The GCP plan isn’t perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction towards better transit and fewer cars. I’d prefer them to be more aggressive though: nationalise and integrate the buses and close more roads to cars thought the city – but if they haven’t found the will for that yet, this will do.
