There has been much speculation in the media about the impact of the congestion charge on the numbers of Tube passengers.
The following is a report into the matter produced by London Underground’s Marketing and Planning Directorate.
Introduction
1) Congestion Charging was introduced on Monday 17th February 2003. Previous modelling and analysis had estimated that LUL would see a net increase of around 1% in traffic. Road users switching to public transport would predominantly switch to rail modes. However the faster bus speeds resulting from road decongestion would result in some transfers from Underground to bus.
2) Based on the first four weeks of operation and comparing with both the previous three weeks and a year ago, we estimate that the network wide transfer to LUL is around 17,000 trips. This represents about 0.6% of weekday trips and 0.5% of total weekly trips. Within the congestion charge zone the increase is around 1.2%.
3) The congestion charging came in during the loss of the Central Line but the comparison with the three weeks prior was possible. The analysis as far as possible avoided stations served only by Central Line; nevertheless certain knock on effects on other lines will have slightly influenced journey patterns. This and the rather uncertain effect of the school half-term render the conclusions slightly less clear.
4) Analysis of the effect on LUL Revenue shows an increase of from 1% to 1.5%. This is higher than the effect on journeys per week and is concentrated on Period and One day tickets. This confirms the prior modelling assumption of gain of longer distance trips but loss of shorter distance trips to buses.
