The Cars That ate London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, Athens ..

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How did we all get trapped in our cars? The automobile was, you'll recall, supposed to revolutionize our quality of life. And for a brief and shining moment, it did. During the salad days of London traffic in the 1970s, when Margaret Thatcher proclaimed that "nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of the great car economy," cars blazed through London at 12-14 km/h during rush hour. Ad campaigns trumpeted the power and comfort of the private car, and people were seduced because, after all, it seemed true. If the city is the apogee of public life, the car became our private sanctuary from it. The little corner of London — or Paris or Madrid — on wheels that is mine, mine, mine.

Today, however, the average traffic speed in London is just over 9 km/h. On some key roads, it has slowed to 2.9 km/h — slower than horse-and-cart days, slower than the rats running in the gutters. Londoners have the worst average commute time at 51 minutes per person, according to a recent survey, but Amsterdam residents only do four minutes better.

It did not have to be this way. "London's traffic and transport problems are just absurdly unnecessary," says Richard Bourn, spokesman for Transport 2000, an independent British organization promoting sustainable transport. City planners have long known that building new roads is not a good answer to traffic jams. Even if cities can find the space (and most European cities cannot), new road space usually only leads to new traffic, unleashing latent driving demand. The M25 motorway around London, the classic example, was built to allow for 30 years of traffic growth. It was jammed within six months. Traffic is like water: it oozes across all available surface. Damming the flow requires a brave — or suicidal — politician.

For better or worse, "Red Ken" Livingstone fits that description. A born Londoner with a common touch and a feisty history, he alone could dare prescribe such rough medicine and have a hope his citizens would swallow it. And so here we are: starting on Monday at 7 a.m., the first car that crossed the big C painted on every artery leading into London's heart had its picture snapped by at least three cameras. The license plate details were then sent to a central computer system, which checked that the driver had paid his €8. For now, the list of exemptions is short — including the disabled, emergency- service vehicles and taxis. Everybody else has until midnight to pay — by phone, text-messaging, online or by visiting one of thousands of convenience stores — although the charge doubles after 10 p.m. Those who don't pay will be mailed a €120 fine. More than three outstanding penalties, and a car can be clamped or towed away.

Livingstone hopes to slash by 15% the 200,000 cars that come into central London every business day. It's not inconceivable. When the historic cathedral city of Durham (pop. 81,000) implemented a similar scheme with only a €3 charge last October, traffic fell by an astounding 90% and stayed there. Durham's plan may be child's play compared to London: it affects only a half-square-kilometer area and the list of exempt vehicles is lengthy (a mere 100 people are charged each day). Even so, one person a day simply refuses to pay up.

When opponents to London's charging start talking, it is easy to see why the policy has not caught on elsewhere. "I'm not paying a tax just because some [jerk] hates cars. I'm taking my business elsewhere. This ain't the city I was born in," writes a visitor to the popular Sod-U-Ken website. Some portion of the complaints are legitimate. After decades of underfunding and neglect, Greater London's public transit system is often late and sometimes lethal, leaving many commuters with few options. The profits from the new charge will be used to rehabilitate the system, but that will take time. Many Londoners find it hard to believe that the capital's transit authority can manage such a massive scheme; indeed, the payment site, www.cclondon.com, has already crashed multiple times.