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

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Still, the emotional attachment to free roads cannot be underestimated. Tony Vickers of the Association of British Drivers sees the rights of man at stake. "The truth is, it's not cars that people love. It's their freedom of mobility. I wouldn't give up my freedom of speech or my right to vote, and I'm very, very reluctant to give up my freedom of mobility. Because that's what makes my life what it is." Never mind that he has already lost much of his mobility. (Drivers in central London spend a third of their journeys at a standstill.)

Rebellion has already taken hold in some corners. Newspapers and websites have shared suggestions for dodging the charge: from high-tech devices that blur the number plate at the flick of a switch to cruder tactics like rubbing mud all over the tag. Motorists Against Detection, which claims to have destroyed hundreds of speed cameras throughout the U.K., plans to torch, spray-paint and run over the congestion-fee cameras, too. "We've clearly paid for these roads already," says a member of the group, who declines to be named. "We're like sheep. The French wouldn't have it."

Driving has never been an entirely logical exercise. Motorists make emotional decisions about when to pass, for example, and tend to think the lane next to them is going faster even when it isn't, according to research by Donald Redelmeier of the University of Toronto and Robert Tibshirani of Stanford University. And once in a jam, they're apt see themselves only as victims rather than part of the problem.

There is, however, one big city where congestion charging has become an accepted part of life: Singapore. Granted, that city also accepts caning. But it's the one comparable model, and the results have been tremendous. A charging scheme has been in place for more than 25 years. Today, each car entering the city center passes by a sensor that reads a "smart card" installed in the dashboard. The charge, which varies from €0.50 to €3 depending on the time of day, is automatically deducted. Every three months, officials tweak the rates to adapt to changing traffic patterns. Driving into Singapore, the success of the system is obvious. Average rush-hour speeds are between 20 and 30 km/h. It is rare to be caught in a traffic jam caused by anything other than an accident.

And still, some Singapore drivers resent the charge — which, truth be told, comes on top of already onerous car taxes. It's not unusual to see a line of cars pulled over on the shoulder just before the charging zone, waiting for 7 p.m. when they can get by for free.

In Europe, it remains much more popular to dance around the edges of the traffic problems than to get brutally efficient. Last September, Athens officials closed the city center to cars for 2 1/2 hours to encourage Greeks to try public transport. The resulting traffic jams spiked the carbon monoxide level by 50%. Athens has also adopted alternate-plate driving days, whereby cars are allowed in every other day depending on the last digit of their license number. But car ownership actually rose: drivers bought a second car with different plates so that they could drive every day.

There are a few success stories, though. The tram system in Strasbourg has become a model for Europe. A decade after its construction, the number of bus commuters has stayed constant and 190,000 additional people now take the tram each day. An elaborate and expensive system of underground tunnels and new perimeter roads has vastly improved the traffic situation in Oslo (which also has a toll cordon, though designed to finance the new roads and not to reduce traffic).

But overall, "the choices are becoming more and more stark," says Bourn, of Transport 2000. This week, as the mayor of London hovers over his sword, his counterparts around the world will be watching. As for the good citizens of London, everyone seems to have his or her own plan. Joanne Cohen, co-founder of the Sod-U-Ken site, finds her neighborhood newly divided. She lives just outside the zone and will now reconsider routine trips to the grocery store or friends' houses. Tory M.P. Michael Fabricant predicts administrative chaos and has vowed to go to jail rather than pay the fine if he ever gets unfairly penalized. And the undertakers Leverton & Sons, who have to cross the charging boundary at least once a day to collect corpses from hospitals, are resigned to passing the charge on to their customers.

Livingstone himself is taking the long view. "I recall the sackfuls of hate mail I got when I first suggested the British government should talk to Gerry Adams. I suspect it may not be quite as risky as that."

Reported by Helena Bachmann/Geneva, Theunis Bates and Michael Brunton/London, Penny Campbell/Durham, Anthee Carassava/Athens, Abi Daruvalla/Amsterdam, Peter Gumbel and Grant Rosenberg/Paris, Joe Kirwin/Brussels, Angela Leuker/Vienna, Mimi Murphy/Rome, Ulla Plon/Copenhagen, Charles P. Wallace and Regine Wosnitza/Berlin and Genevieve Wilkinson/Singapore