Congestion charge for Athens?
Athens should consider introducing a congestion charge system similar to those used in London and Stockholm to reduce the amount of traffic in the city center, transport experts said at a conference in Athens yesterday. In recent years, authorities have ruled out the idea of charging drivers to enter central Athens during peak hours but transport engineers said yesterday that the success of the scheme in other European cities should prompt a rethink. Congestion charging was introduced in London some four years ago and has led to traffic in the city center being reduced by a third. Drivers entering central London between 7 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. have to pay 8 pounds (12 euros). Some 50,000 people who would have been driving their cars into central London are instead taking public transport or cycling to work, Martin Richards, an adviser to the London Assembly, told the conference. «The philosophy behind these measures is that users have to pay the cost of using the road, which includes infrastructure, maintenance of the road network, the environmental cost and even the cost of traffic accidents,» he said. In Stockholm, a congestion charge began in January 2006 and has led to traffic dropping by a quarter and journey times being reduced by up to 50 percent. Greek transport experts said that making drivers pay to enter central Athens would be an unpopular move and would have to be backed by improvements in the public transport network and other measures to control traffic. «The implementation of additional measures, along with strict policing, is necessary for the effective application of this system,» said Yiannis Handanos, the president of the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers.
