We the undersigned call on the Mayor of London (who is also the Chair of the Transport for London), Sadiq Khan, to remove plans to introduce a pay-per-mile scheme from the London Transport Strategy. We also call on the Mayor to scrap ‘Project Detroit’ – TfL’s programme for enabling road charging by distance.
The Mayor has repeatedly called for a pay-per-mile scheme for the capital since his election in 2016. In June 2017, when the Mayor unveiled the draft of the Transport Strategy he included a commitment that: “Transport for London will explore the next generation of road user charging that could harness new technology to better reflect distance, time, emissions, road danger and other factors in an integrated way. This could include a single 'per mile' charge which takes into account both congestion and emissions objectives.”
Pay-per-mile road charging would be devasting to communities in places across Bromley, especially places like Keston, Downe and Biggin Hill. These towns and villages are not well served by public transport and are reliant on their vehicles for work, visiting families, getting to the shops and even just going about their day to day lives. These communities are at risk of becoming isolated if local people are priced off the roads.
We therefore call on the Mayor to remove the road user charges based on distance from the London Transport Strategy and to scrap Project Detroit.