BRITAIN: The Mayor of London, Mr Ken Livingstone, has vastly underestimated the number of passengers who will squeeze on to the London Underground rail network when his £5-a-day congestion charge begins on Monday, according to London assembly members.
An NOP poll published yesterday suggested the charge could be more successful than the mayor's office has dared to predict, with 22 per cent of drivers ready to abandon their cars rather than pay the charge. But the study, commissioned by the assembly's transport committee, found that 36 per cent planned to take the underground instead, which could amount to an extra 11,000 passengers a day on the already overcrowded network.
The findings coincided with a day of chaos for tube travellers, as a power failure at Baker Street caused a signalling computer to crash, reaping havoc on the Circle, Jubilee, Metropolitan and Hammersmith and City lines.
A second signal failure at South Harrow caused the suspension of the Piccadilly line, while the Central and Waterloo and City lines remained closed pending an investigation into last month's Chancery Lane crash.
A rail spokesman said: "It's just been one of those horrible, horrible mornings today."
Mr Livingstone's transport for London authority accepts that the tube is operating near capacity. It has predicted that nearly all the travellers lured out of their cars by the congestion charge will get on buses, which have spare capacity.
Mr Roger Evans, the Conservative transport spokesman in the assembly, said: "Most of the people you want to deter from driving come in from Kent and Essex. The idea that people will magically transfer themselves on to buses flies in the face of common sense."
An article in the Economist magazine today will claim that the transport minister, Mr John Spellar, asked the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority not to co-operate with the scheme.
It claims Mr Spellar only dropped his opposition following an intervention by the prime minister. A spokesman for Mr Spellar declined to comment yesterday.
London Underground's managing director, Mr Paul Godier, yesterday admitted to assembly members that he had not read a report prepared by his own staff into the Chancery Lane derailment.
He said tube bosses still did not know whether metal fatigue or vibration caused a half-tonne motor to fall off the bottom of a carriage. He apologised to passengers. "I recognise, because I travel on the tube every day myself, that there are very difficult journeys being experienced."
- (Guardian Service)