10,000 drivers fail to pay congestion charge
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Your support makes all the difference.Up to 10,000 people did not pay London's congestion charge on the first day of its operation, the Mayor Ken Livingstone announced today.
Manual checks are expected to reduce that number but those who did not pay the £5 fee will be receiving their penalty notices by the end of the week, Mr Livingstone warned.
He described the first day of the central London congestion charge as "the best day in traffic flow we have had in living memory" and suggested that Government interest in traffic management payment schemes may now have peaked.
London's Mayor vowed that he would not scrap the scheme because of the number of non-payers.
"We are not going to allow freeloaders to ride on the back of thousands of law abiding Londoners," Mr Livingstone said.
Many of the non-payers were probably "chancers" who hoped the system would suffer a technical meltdown on its first day to help them evade the charge.
Latest figures show that on Monday about 190,000 vehicles crossed into the congestion zone which covers eight-square-miles of central London.
Over 100,000 paid the £5 for the day. Around 20,000 fleet vehicles and 45,000 vehicles which were exempt, such as buses, taxis, emergency vehicles and 100% discount holders, were in the zone. Then there was the 10,000 who did not pay.
All the figures are approximate and the 700 cameras scattered around the zone capture about 90% of vehicles and number plates which are then checked against payment records.
The scheme ran smoothly despite the Mayor's fears of technical problems and rat-running around the edge of the zone.
Mr Livingstone said that he had even received a phone call of congratulations from Transport Minister John Spellar who jokingly told him: "The devil takes care of his own."
Rebecca Rees, of the AA, said: "The non-payment figure is very high, although it's likely to come down."
She went on: "Some of our members have contacted us to say that they have had trouble paying. People have faced long waits to get through to the call centre so they can pay, and it seems that some have just given up and chosen to pay a fine.
"The organisers need to sharpen up their act so people have no difficulty in paying."
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