Transport@IMG_0207

By the end of today Londoners will have voted to elect a new mayor.  The victor will have a significant impact on road freight, with both regional and national players affected by the policy decisions taken during the next four years.

MT cherry-picks some of the key promises from the mayoral candidates to find out what they propose to do to aid, or harm, the road transport industry.

Ken Livingstone - Labour Party candidate

Livingstone's manifesto pledges that, as mayor, he would:

  • Cut congestion through SMART parking, based on San Francisco's SF Park experiment. It would make it easier and quicker to find parking in London.
  • Focus on roadworks: better co-ordination and procecution of utility companies that break the rules.
  • Ask Transport for London to look into more freight consolidation centres for the capital.
  • Maintain the exisiting Congestion Charge Zone and freeze prices for four years.
  • Safer cycling: safer junctions and Cycle Superhighways; increasing policing of cycle lanes and expansion of the existing Cycle Hire scheme into South London.

Boris Johnson – Conservative Party candidate

Johnson’s manifesto pledges that, as mayor, he would:

  • Establish a £50m roads blackspot fund to relieve congestion in key locations in London. The money will be spent on redesigning roads to improve traffic flow; optimising traffic signals, removing street clutter and improving conditions for pedestrians and cyclists.
  • Establish a London Roads Task Force to create long-term proposals to tackle London’s most notorious roads – including the Hammersmith flyover, Purley Way, Wandsworth town centre, Euston Road, Archway and Kings Cross. The task force will report to the Mayor within six months with a strategic review of London’s roads.
  • Introduce a ‘lane rental’ scheme to tackle roadworks (money raised would be used to cut roadworks derived congestion), as well as expanding the report it system for potholes.
  • Continue with his review of traffic light phasing.
  • Triple the number of cycle superhighways to 12 by 2015.
  • ‘Drive forward’ a new road tunnel between the Greenwich Peninsula and Silvertown.
  • Never introduce a London-wide Congestion Charge.

Brian Paddick - Liberal Democrat candidate

Paddick's manifesto pledges that, as mayor, he would:

  •  Invest to get London moving; although this investment would be into improving the public travel network (Tube, trains etc).
  • Provide more express bus routes as well as orbital bus routes to avoid the need to travel into central London.
  • Encourage businesses to adopt flexible working practices to reduce rush-hour volume.
  • Mandate "most" commercial vans to be electric by 2020.
  • Set up a clean air zone for London modelled on Berlin's to enforce higher engine standards.
  • Keep the Congestion Charge; rise fees in line with public transport fare increases; conult on whether road pricing for commercial vechiles at peak time should be considered.

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