London's winners and losers on Mayor Ken's wheel of fortune
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Your support makes all the difference.Metropolis Motorcycles has a large banner draped above its showroom on the edge of the congestion zone charging area in central London. "What charge?" it asks. Bikes go free.
John Ward, a senior salesman, has seen a sharp increase in interest from drivers and lapsed motorcyclists. The trend started towards the end of last year as Londoners realised the congestion charge was coming and looked for ways to avoid paying £1,300 a year. "We've had a slight improvement in business so far but we've had a massive increase in people coming into the shop and showing an interest," Mr Ward said.
"At the moment, they're still just thinking about it. People are still a bit cautious; it's a big decision spending £2,000 on a scooter and they are more dangerous than sitting in a car. But we will, most definitely, see an increase in sales." Before the charge was introduced on Monday, Mr Ward, 28, would look out from the showroom on to a traffic jam at Vauxhall Cross, one of London's busiest road junctions. Yesterday, he saw a single car at the traffic lights and five motorcycles.
"Public transport just depresses me. Driving a bike into work, you know what time you are going to take and if you're late, it's your fault."
Only a few hundred yards away at New Covent Garden Market, Michael Duke is much more downbeat on the effects of the congestion charge on his business. He co-ordinates deliveries of fruit and vegetables to restaurants, businesses and hotels in and around London in the company's two vans.
For the first week of the charge, he paid £50 for both vans to run in and out of the zone. He is rethinking his policy and hopes on some days to run just one of the vans or the charge will bite deeply into his weekly turnover of about £20,000.
In a highly competitive business where orders are won and lost to rivals almost every month, Mr Duke cannot afford to pass on the full extent of the charge to his customers.
Although the market is just outside the congestion charge zone, many deliveries take the vans into the charging area. "If you try to put it on the bill, the customers are going to phone and scream and go elsewhere," said Mr Duke, 47, managing director of PW Finlayson. "At the moment it's just coming straight out of the bank account. We're only a small company and straight away it's another thing added on.
"This business is so cut-throat it's unbelievable. It's so precarious but like everybody else we have just got to bite the bullet."
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