Town Hall Titans
Meet five big city bosses — the mayors of Rome, London, Stockholm, Berlin and Paris — who are tackling the challenges of contemporary urban life with new energy and ideas.
MR GLUM The controversial Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone.
The Traffic Cop
Posted Sunday, May 8, 2005; 1.15 BST
LONDON
Sitting in his office in city hall, a postmodernist protuberance on the River Thames opposite the Tower of London, Ken Livingstone is entitled to a laugh at the expense of his many critics. He's at the peak of a political career that's spanned more than half of his 59 years. After a decade in local government, the Labour politician was elected head of the Greater London Council (glc), as the capital's governing body was then known, in 1981. Newspapers dubbed him Red Ken for sensationalist policies like declaring London a "nuclear-free zone." Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher disbanded the glc in 1986, but a year later Livingstone won a seat in Parliament, which he held for 14 years.
Before London's first mayoral election in 2000, Livingstone was ejected from the Labour Party for breaking his promise not to oppose the party's official candidate — whom he subsequently trounced. Re-elected to a second term last June, the mayor can afford to be amused that his most contentious policy to date — initiating a fee scheme for vehicles entering central London — has also been his most successful. "The congestion charge is the only thing I've done in 33 years in public life that turned out better than I hoped," he says.
Before the charge was implemented, London, like many European cities, was heading inexorably toward gridlock. At rush hour, bridges looked like parking lots, and pedestrians moved as fast as cars on some of the busiest streets. So Livingstone introduced a congestion-charging scheme that taxes drivers almost $10 a day to enter the city's central zone. Now vehicles flow much more freely, congestion in the zone has dropped and traffic delays are down by 30%. To alleviate the extra strain on public transport, London is investing $19 billion in its bus, underground, road and rail systems over the next five years.
But the scheme has not been an unqualified success. A report commissioned by retailer John Lewis suggests the charge has reduced sales at its Oxford Street branch by 5.5%; the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry says 42% of the 334 retailers it surveyed blamed the charge for a drop in their business. "There is a disputed result in terms of the London economy, but an undisputed result in terms of reducing traffic," says Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics.
The charge hasn't raised as much money to invest in public transport as projected, either. The first year's take was $127 million, just two-thirds of the expected $190 million, and not enough to avoid fare hikes. Livingstone is loathed and liked in almost equal measure, but many Londoners balk at his pledge to raise the congestion charge 60% to around $15 in July. Nevertheless, he has set the gold standard for audacity in tackling a problem that plagues all major European cities. And he plans to seek a third term in 2008 so he can complete London's transport overhaul. "I'd like to push that through," he says, "and demonstrate that somebody can get projects done on time and and on budget."
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