Monday, August 07, 2006

Road charging for Stanstead

There have been suggestions in the past few days that road charging of some sort, be it a toll or congestion charging may be introduced by the Government in the roads approaching Stanstead Airport. Tory-run Essex County Council is making a bid for £2.5m Department of Transport funding for research and development. As part of the funding bid, the M11 and roads around Stanstead would be made toll roads to encourage people to use public transport to get to the airport instead.

I'm going to presume that the people thinking this would be a good idea either don't have a family or rarely take them abroad. Moving a family with small children is, in itself alone, like raising a small army. Doing it on public transport at 3am so you can catch your Easyjet flight to Tenerife would be a nightmare. Such a scheme won't encourage people off the motorway and onto public transport, it will make money though. I imagine the hauliers that go between London and Cambridge will be hit hard by it (and Ellee Seymour too).

3 comments:

Ellee Seymour said...

That's the airport I use if I can. I remember seeing Cecil Parkinson there when he laid a foundation stone for its expansion many years ago.

Will Heathrow and Gatwick get a similar toll? Yes, I think road tolls are a dead cert, they have them in lots of other countries, I'm not sure what their road tax system is compared to ours.

Croydonian said...

Whatever you do, don't get an airport cab from Stansted back to London. I did once (with family in tow) as the pre-booked one didn't turn up or answer his mobile etc. Five or so years back this was about 80 quid.

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