Derek Turner, until recently Transport for London’s director of street management, presented the impressive results and the "how-to" story of the "congestion charging" system recently inaugurated in London to New Yorkers last week. Turner headlined the Regional Plan Association’s annual regional assembly on Friday, and attended several other meetings with interested parties.

The £5 charge for driving in central London that Mayor Ken Livingstone imposed on February 17 has cut traffic volumes in the affected area by about 17%. The charge is not paid via a toll medium like E-ZPass. Rather, motorists who enter the central zone between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. must register (by paying -- over the phone, on the internet, at various pay-points, etc.) for that day’s database of permitted vehicles. A system of 700 cameras on the zone’s periphery and its interior read the license plates of any unregistered vehicle. If the car’s owner does not register (pay) by 10 p.m. that evening, the system levies an £80 fine.

There were predictable warnings of chaos and failure leading up to the system’s inauguration. But Turner said the system had proven "easier and better than even supportive academics, economists and engineers had predicted."

Turner noted some of the big benefits London is seeing from the traffic reduction:

Buses are moving around the central area. In fact, they now need to sit at stops for periods in order to not get ahead of schedule. Bus authorities are now re-writing schedules to account for faster, more reliable trip times. Livingstone added 300 buses to the city’s fleet prior to pricing’s advent. Some of the congestion charge’s revenues will also support subway and road improvements.

Plans are in the works for a variety of pedestrianization projects, along the lines of the recent walker-friendly reorganization of Trafalgar Square, to make best use of street space reclaimed from cars.

So far, traffic officials have seen no "return" in traffic levels as London becomes used to the charging system. Vehicle volumes fell abruptly when the charge was introduced and have remained flat at the -17% level.

Turner said claims that the congestion charge is socially regressive are "total rubbish" because car ownership and driving in London’s central area is concentrated higher up on the economic scale, while the use of congestion revenues and the reduction of traffic is improving bus travel, cycling, walking and the subway system. He said "there is no evidence that the less well off are not traveling."

He also related that civil liberties advocates had not opposed the system. Images of the cars of non-violators are erased from the system after each day. Moreover, police do not have regular access to the system’s data. It will only be provided upon request, and each request must be approved by top-level TfL officials.

Because the vast proportion of those traveling into central London each day use public transit, the congestion charge aims only to affect the behavior of about 20,000 hard core city motorists.

Turner predicted that London’s success with the pricing system marked the writing of a "whole new book" on urban transportation policy. Other British cities are expected to consider similar systems, and the UK national government is considering congestion pricing for the motorway system.

In considering the application of London’s experience in New York, it’s worth noting some of the differences in the two policy environments:

In London, a rough consensus existed before Mayor Livingstone’s election that transportation and traffic needed to be tamed. Livingstone’s opponents in the election also favored congestion pricing, but proposed less ambitious timetables. In New York, Mayor Bloomberg has taken some steps against congestion, but busting traffic was not a signature issue in his election. Moreover, the mayor’s general talk of support for East River Bridge tolls — while supported by the newspapers — has been met with a sniping campaign by Queens and Brooklyn politicians, and the business community has said nothing on the topic.

Much of the discussion about bridge tolls in New York has centered on the fiscal crisis rather than fighting traffic congestion. If that is seen as tolls’ main impetus, it may be harder to win support for them by assembling an overall transportation policy package. In London, congestion pricing was proposed as part of a mix that included more buses, increased investment in the Underground, much better bus travel conditions, more space for cycling and walking and a set of roadway capital projects.

Manhattan is unlikely to see traffic reduction on the order of 17% from the implementation of East River bridge tolls. That’s because much of the car traffic reaching the Manhattan central business district already pays to enter. All of the traffic from New Jersey, and vehicles using the East River tunnels, are subject to tolls. The New Jersey crossings also already feature time-of-day incentive prices to reduce peak congestion. Still, East River bridge vehicle volumes are heavy, and tolls (with high peak prices) would reduce congestion to some degree. Traffic reduction sufficient to boost Manhattan bus speeds and the quality of the pedestrian environment would likely require something more London-like: East River tolls, higher Port Authority and MTA toll rates plus a 60th Street pricing cordon that would capture CBD vehicle entries from the north. Abysmal bus speeds on major thoroughfares in the boroughs would not be improved — such routes await some form of bus rapid transit treatment by the city and NYC Transit.

Turner pointed out an interesting difference that would appear to favor additional road pricing in the New York area. Outside the new London system, Great Britain has virtually no road tolls. Anyone who drives from say, the Jersey shore to Queens knows that tolls are relatively ubiquitous here. In other words, congestion pricing in London represented a bigger cultural leap than we would have to negotiate in adding tolls to a few more New York bridges. The big question thus remains whether New York’s leaders will ever get serious about taming traffic, and put real leadership behind the effort.

During a panel discussion that followed Turner’s address at the RPA assembly, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi noted that Long Island had not taken a role in city debates over East River tolls. Instead of opposing tolls, however, Suozzi implied that if they are implemented, he is interested in getting a piece of their revenue for needed infrastructure work in Nassau County. Whatever the merits of potential toll revenue flowing outside of the city, Suozzi’s position is a far sight more enlightened and pragmatic than that taken by the group of Queens and Brooklyn officials who keep trying to shout down the issue of East River tolls. News last week of NYC Transit’s long-term look at connecting the Jay St. and Lawrence St. stations in downtown Brooklyn reminds that beneath the headlines about the 2^nd Avenue Subway and #7 extension, there are a great many workaday capital improvements that would improve the subway’s utility and attractiveness in NYC’s boroughs. They will not happen without leadership that is willing to identify and go after the resources needed to build them.

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