Was Ken’s flagship policy a mistake?

News has emerged recently that traffic speeds in London are at about the same rate as pre congestion charge.

I have held up the congestion charge as one of the major successes of Ken Livingstone’s time in office, and thus counted it as one of the positive outcomes of Labour’s package of devolution measures (although strictly speaking the CC was not a devolved matter since London’s local boroughs had the power to introduce such a measure anyway).

Today’s editorial in the Guardian lays out the defence for the CC, and combats likely criticism from road lobby groups:

‘London’s roads, it emerged yesterday, are just as snarled up as they were before the congestion charge was introduced five years ago. So was it a costly mistake? Quite the opposite. The charge netted £137m last year and has cut the number of cars entering the central zone each day by 70,000. Unfortunately, road diggers and construction mean those who do drive in spend too much time in jams. This is bad for pollution levels, despite the crackdown on noxious vehicles that Ken Livingstone’s administration put in place. It is frustrating for drivers. But it is not an indictment of the £8 charge, which remains the best way to deter cars from entering the capital.’