Cameras in UK for Toll Enforcement 618
cosyne writes "Saw this story on BBC News about charging people £5 per day to drive in central London. The interesting part: they plan to use surveillance cameras to snap liscence plates and compare to a database of people who paid. That's the same as stopping terrorism, right?" We mentioned this issue in an earlier story. It's an interesting challenge: the UK authorities have a problem (too much traffic in London) which is not susceptible to the usual solution (too many ways into London, can't put tolls on all of them) and so they're looking for new solutions - except most of the possible solutions are privacy-invasive in one way or another.
Once again... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Once again... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're out in public (Score:5, Insightful)
A traffic warden looking at your car number plate on the street isn't invading your privacy and neither is this. It's just the scale and organisation behind this that makes it scary, not the action being performed.
Re:If you're out in public (Score:2, Interesting)
In Finland, if anyone sees your license plate number (e.g. if you drive on the road), they have the right to find out who you are and the municipality in which you live. All you have to do is call the registration center, and they'll tell you who owns whichever license plate you read off to them. But hold on, it gets better.
Finland's largest mobile operator, Sonera [sonera.net], has linked into the registration database and now offers you a service, whereby you send a text message to number 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND AUTO XYZ-123 (the license plate number), and it returns a text message containing the owner of the car's information. Hold on, it gets even better.
After getting their name, you can turn around and use the same service to get their mobile phone number. Just send and SMS to 16400, with the body of the message reading FIND HARRI HIRVI (or whatever his/her name is) and it'll return and SMS to you with their mobile phone number.
Needless to say, there's just a *wee bit* of potential for abuse with this system. Like, some old pervert sees young chick driving, calls her up on her mobile phone and says "I'm watching you" or some crap, and follows her home. Or you cut someone off in traffic and they decide to find out who you are and harass you for the next ten years. Or something.
Fortunately, though, I haven't yet heard any real horror stories of this kind of abuse.
Re:If you're out in public (Score:2, Informative)
The UK has fairly strict privacy laws, and is a signatory to the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) - they wouldn't be able to do photograph your car if it violated the privacy of the individual. Interestingly enough, they can't take a photo of the car from the front for privacy reasons - never mind the fact that having a camera flash going off in your face would render you unable to drive safely for at least a few seconds.
HTH,
Alan.
Re:If you're out in public (Score:3, Informative)
Since when have speed cameras been about safety? Its not like they're in front of schools. They are revenue raisers to pay for donuts, and thats about it.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
The public transport system in London is probably the most widely used in the UK because for many people, driving in London is a nightmare they'd rather not think about. If it became easier, everybody would jump straight back in the cars and hit town, particularly as the public transport system is mostly in a poor state of repair.
While I think there are serious problems with the proposed scheme, the answer is definitely not "build more roads"
Re:Once again... (Score:2)
Clue for the clueless: they've always been able to do this, but the resources to do so have never been available for mass deployment. AKA ".Tailing A Car".. Secret services, Police, private detectives.
This is NOT an invasion of privacy, in itself. You are, after all, in a public place where your expectation of privacy is, or should be much lower than in your own home.
Note that there are risks here nonetheless, but these are th boringly normal ones around information security, ensuring authorised access only, etc etc etc. But I can't see that this is a frothing-at-the-mouth EFF/ACLU live-free-or-die Invasion Of Privacy issue.
Re:Once again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Once again... (Score:2)
No-one is suggesting that; there's no NEED to know where/when people are all the time. Only where a certain car is; toll or non-toll. I voted for Ken Livingstone (the mayor who's bringing this scheme in) so I'm in favour, anyway.
Re:Once again... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's see, L36-4885 drove down this street which is near a known brothel twice last week. It was also spotted near this cheap hotel three other days of the week. It's registered to an important political figure. Let's leak this information to the press.
The following persons were spotted near the local synagogue the last four sabbaths: ...
Traffic analysis isn't just network traffic.
(I live in the States, so forgive my possibly inaccurate license plate number.)
Re:Once again... (Score:2)
Re:Once again... (Score:3, Funny)
Spare us, please. If you can afford to run a mistress on the side, you can afford a taxi.
</cynic>
Its not even your number.... (Score:2)
What we need (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What we need (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What we need (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes I despair of Slashdotters.
Re:What we need (Score:2)
Re:What we need (Score:2)
If I lived in London, I don't think I'd be all that concerned about toll-enforcement. I'd be more concerned about whether my health insurance company is examining my gait on the street for an excuse to raise my rates. Or whether the politicians in power are using this to dig up dirt on their political adversaries.
Aw, hell (Score:2)
Which would be illegal... (Score:3, Insightful)
A simpler answer in a city which has the oldest underground system would be... to use public transport. As someone who uses it every day it amazes me that people don't go totally postal waiting in queues all the time in their cars.
Example: Saturday night going from St. James' to Charing Cross, we got out of the cab at the end of the Mall (which is not pronounced Maul) and walked the rest as it would have taken three times as long in the cab.
London is not a city designed for cars, and personally I'm all in favour of scaming the stupid who insist on driving.
Re:Whats the point of being anti-car? (Score:4, Interesting)
I accept that some people need to use cars, and I also accept that the public transport system is awful in some places, but the bottom line is that something has to be done, because the whole system is grinding to a halt.
I don't have any problem with this charge, and frankly, if they don't use cameras, there really isn't any other viable way to do it - can you imagine everyone in London stopping at a toll booth??
There are some major problems with the scheme, but I don't think the method do doing it is one of them.
Re:What we need (Score:2)
Sorry to sound like a NIMBY, Middle-aged fuddy-duddy BUT...
What we really need is reliable, affordable and accessible Public Transport so we can avoid having to use our cars in the middle of a city anyway.
I speak as a car-owner and public transport user, and a commuter-to-London. I wouldn't dream of using my car to come in anyway (it took a colleague 2.5 hours to get from Gatwick airport to the office here in central London this morning), but relying on our trains, tube lines and buses is equally frustrating (My train was delayed 4 days out of 5 last week).
My car is for getting me from city to city, or for transporting goods and passengers on local journeys. It's just not good at taking just me from point A to point B in an urban conurbation and yet walking out of Waterloo station on any day of the week that's what you'll see: cars full of single occupants taking up 20 times the ground space of a pedestrian and 8 times the space of a bicycle.
Folks, I'm in favour of congestion charges - as long as you have an alternative to using your car, and as long as those charges are spent on those alternatives.
Public Transportation (Score:3, Funny)
Not a new idea (Score:4, Informative)
Highway 407 north of Toronto has had this for years. They do it a little differently in that they sell transponders to frequent users and only take pictures of vehicles that don't have the transponders. Whether you have a transponder or not, you get a bill in the mail for using the highway.
The problem here isn't privacy, but rather the fact that a private company manages the highway. If they send you a bill and you disagree with the charges they can keep you from getting your license/vehicle permit renewed. I don't like it when private companies can get you by the balls like that.
Aside from that, it's not a bad system.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
Side note, about 2 months ago, I pulled up to the toll booth and in the next lane over was a '02 Ford Mustang, sideways in the booth. Damned weird, as I couldn't see any damage to the car, it was just sitting there sideways. Heh.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
My only complaint is that it's not terribly obvious to out-of-towners just how the toll issue is worked out, or the charges. We were in a U-Haul, and AFTER dropping the truck off, we found out just how high the charge would have been. Thankfully we DIDN'T take it, the 401 was surprisingly light for a Sunday afternoon.
All in all though, if it's well signed, and there's an alternate free route, who can complain? Let those who want to pay have the fancy extras, it's just like everything else in life. And if you're too paranoid to drive it... don't.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
Come to think of it, I have no idea what they do with Americans who drive on the 407. I suppose they can get the billing address from the DMV (I think that's what it's called in the U.S.), but I doubt they can enforce it.
I think they had to pass special legislation in Canada to make the bills legal, since you don't actually agree to/sign anything when you enter the highway.
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
How is it handled for rented vehicles? Does the rental company hold onto the deposit for a month or somthing like that...
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
I think they charge it to your credit card later on. (And yes, you do have to present a credit card in order to rent the vehicle - I think that's evil.)
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2, Interesting)
In cases where the owner is the person driving the car, this does not seem like too much of a problem -- you know when you've been caught and you expect the summons in the mail (the flash is so bright, you can't mistake it, even in full sunlight, which is all-too-rare in Germany).
The problem arises when the car's owner and the person caught violation traffic laws are not the same. In Germany, the vehicle's owner is responsible for either identifying the individual in the photo or paying the fine, which to me shifts the burden of law enforcement from the state to the individual. Why should I accept this responsibility? It is the responsibiltiy of the police to figure who committed a crime, however minor, and not force me to choose between paying a fine or identifying the culprit -- assuming that I know who the person is.
I wonder how the British system is going to handle this?
Re:Not a new idea (Score:2)
Now about the camera's. They are being taken down because of the problems of not getting the right photo with the right data (Remember the trucks that speed through town at 180 KPM). And too many people actually confront the ticket in court and win.
Now about the person owning the car being responsible. Not true. Sure in essence this is the case, but if you can get a friend in another country to legally say they were driving the car then you are not responsible anymore. Another scam, which is causing the police to chase law breakers like in good'ol North America.
So in the end the camera's may still exist, but more and more police throughout Europe (outside the UK) are actually stopping people physically so that they cannot scam out of a ticket. Even in Switzerland where there are camera's everywhere they have switched over to using the physical presence of the police.
Re:And in Melbourne Australia (Score:2)
--jquirke
BS... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's BS.. There's tons of roads going in and out of "my own" capital (Oslo). They just put up a ring of booths all around it. The cost of a booth should be made up in a single day worth of tolls, I would imagine. Granted, London is a billion times larger, but then again that means a lot more cars so it should scale.
The trick is to not toll the road, the toll is for entering/polluting the city. It's a traffic control measure, not a "pay for the road you're driving on" kinda thing.
Also, it doesn't do jack diddley squat for the amount of traffic so all it ends up being is extra money for the govt to use on anything but roads and car related issues.
Re:BS... (Score:2, Informative)
The answer is to dismantle London. Why do we need it? Technology means there is no longer a need to gather huge numbers of people together in big buildings for them to cooperate. And there is nothing useful or productive in Central London that requires large manufacturing sites. The reason for the dominance of London is all those civil servants living in houses with vastly inflated prices and hoping to retire, sell them and get rich. Making travel INTO London more expensive will benefit those house prices still further. It's classical monopoly economics, as explained by Karl Marx.
Even the planning system colludes, preventing the building of houses in surrounding areas to drive prices up still further.
But of course, the Mayor's position depends on all this continuing to work. If prices fall or London starts to be sidelined, he'll be out. So: devise a scheme to make living in Central London even more attractive. And don't worry about the folks having enough money to live there. It's your and my pension schemes they're raping to pay their bonuses.
Re:BS... (Score:2)
You make a good point that London is so dense, putting up toll booths is not practical. But please leave out the Marxist economics, it doesn't make any sense at all. Are you suggesting that the entire 10,000 year old concept of cities is now out of date because Marx says so and you've got a modem??
London's industrys are financial services, tourism, and other service industry, all of which benefit from high density of population and services.
The reason for the dominance of London has nothing to do with house prices or civil servants. The reason for the high prices and the existance of civil servants has something to do with the dominance of London. Try to get your causes and effects sorted out. Remember - demand leads to price increase, not vice versa (except for Stella Artois, ha ha ha).
Anyway, since technology means there's no need to live in big cities, why do you care if you have to pay a fiver to drive your car into London? Can't you just move to Penrith and work from home or something? Or take the tube? Jeez, lighten up.
Re:BS... (Score:2)
Re:BS... (Score:2)
Most parking in London is on-street, meaning that you need to police it with people to enforce it. That's very expensive, you basically have to walk down each street seeing if people have paid.
A lot of the central London traffic problem is not people coming in to work in the city or go shopping in the city or whatever - it is people going _through_ the city from one non-central location to another, via the center.
Re:BS... (Score:2)
Privacy (Score:2, Redundant)
except most of the possible solutions are privacy-invasive in one way or another.
Here in the UK, a variety of new laws have made protection of privacy paramount in almost all private and commercial transactions. Pretty well the only exceptions allowable are those that the government has allowed itself.
There are currently new rules being made which allow almost any government department, QUANGO, or local council to overrule the privacy laws for almost any reason.
Big Brother rules OK!
Re:Privacy (Score:2)
Big Brother rules *UK*!/p.
Seems like a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the issue of privacy -- the government randomly recording peoples' presence and location to see if they've paid this tax. Yeah, that's a nasty one. If you provide public transportation which is cheaper than driving, people will use it, you don't need to essentially force them to do so by charging an arm and a leg.
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:4, Funny)
Try riding a bicycle in central London and then you'd think it was a great idea. Think of it like this:
Car Drivers = Users of IE5 and IE 6Car Manufacturers = The Borg
Cyclists and Pedestrians = Linux and FreeBSD hackers
Around 20 Linux hackers a year are turned into Jam by ignoramuses using IE 5 (the number of cyclists killled by chromed SUVs in London) and finally the government steps in to stop the slaughter with a new law called the DMCA which the MS users club scream is an invasion of privacy. Smug kernel hackers point out that as long as you use Linux 2 wheels no one can get you with the DMCA and all PC / CD use is free.
Cue a huge rise in the number of fat-bottomed housewives picking up copies of RedHat in Dixons and the world lives happily ever after.....
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
Your Segway [segway.com] must be broken then
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
Guess What? The Port Authority of New York And New Jersey charges, get this-- Tolls!. I know, I couldn't believe it either, but apparently, if you want to enter Manhattan, you'll have to pay a toll of $5. What the bridge trolls charge [panynj.gov] That's $1300 a year. BTW, at the current exchange rate of £1=1.56, £1300 is only worth $2024. Foreign Exchange Rates [washingtonpost.com]
"public" lands & public transpo (Score:2)
but my understanding of how it is in America,
is that all of your rights and freedoms are granted to you by the state (I don't mean like in the 50 states of the US, I mean the more abstract "state") and as such they have the right to restrict your freedoms to a degree.
Yes, the bill of rights grants the freedom to move, but not to tresspass. This is the same logic that puts the FCC in charge of the "air" and its bandwith spectrum.
Now, on to your public transpo comment:
unless you get to an underground station (I must admit I don't know much about London public transpo) you still have to use the roads (from what I understand you wouldn't want to use the rails!) and if there is more traffic the public transpo bus is bottlenecked by all the damn cars!
So if you reduce the number of cars on the road, you improve the efficiency of buses, thus making them a more attractive alternative. You have to boot-strap somehow!
Re:"public" lands & public transpo (Score:2)
however in times of "National Emergency" previously "granted" rights (both those that are explicitly granted in the Constitution and those that as you say aren't claimed by them) can be taken away. A good example is japanese interrment(sp?) during WWII. Still "good law" (despite the army lying about the threat) according to be soon-to-be-lawyer wife.
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah. And if you're driving in London, you've got plenty of time to examine those public lands. The average speed inside the city is about 15Km/h. The city's residents (and workers) are already paying in terms of increased pollutants, shitty travel times and the aggravation of seeing hundreds of cars going in the same direction, each of which contains only the driver.
Ken Livingstone has stated that the money raised (about UKP150M, if memory serves) will go to improving public transport. Ten years from now, it's vaguely possible that London will have a transport system the envy of the world, and only the most determined of assholes will travel by car.
think about the holy hell that would get raised if you decided to charge a fee of $2500 a year to drive to Manhattan Island!
Think of the holy hell that would get raised if the Bush 'administration' decided to intern hundreds of people without trial, or access to a lawyer! Everyone - americans included - will put up with a lot if they're given a half-assed excuse as to why it's necessary. If it took you three hours to traverse a few streets every day of the week, you can bet your ass that there'd be holy hell to pay for whomever decided that the status quo was better than any attempt at decreasing the traffic, and therefore the problem.
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:4, Informative)
No it doesn't. The people driving in London during rush hour generally aren't doing it for fun, but because they fit into one of two categories: commuters or commercial traffic. If driving is discouraged, how are these people going to do their jobs? Public transport in London long ago passed its design capacity; try riding the Northern Line between 7am and 9am if you don't believe me. And it isn't even an option for commercial traffic - you can't take the bus or the tube if you're delivering 1000 loaves of bread to Tesco Metro.
Telecommuting isn't an option for most people, really it isn't even an option for technical people like sysadmins. Yes, you can telnet over S/WAN and restart a mail server, that's trivial. But London is one of the world's financial centres; when there's a problem with an application consisting of millions of lines of bespoke code from half a dozen different vendors running on millions of pounds of hardware from another half dozen vendors (pretty much all IT in the Square Mile is like this), the only way to solve the problem is to get all the relevant people together in a room working on it. There is no alternative but for people to travel into London itself to work.
think about the holy hell that would get raised if you decided to charge a fee of $2500 a year to drive to Manhattan Island!
In NYC, there is a trend of banks like Goldman's moving to New Jersey, and Warburg's moved up to Stamford, but it's all still within close proximity to Manhattan. Technology has not advanced to the point where location is irrelevant if your business has to interact in any non-trivial way with another business. That's why there's a Silicon Valley, too.
Personally, I'm against any scheme in which a citizen of a nation is charged money by the government to travel to or across particular public lands. They're public lands! Public!)
Really, the problem is that Ken Livingstone hates cars, always has. A classical socialist, he thinks all transport should be public, and that taxation is the solution to every problem. There's only one feasible solution, and that's that the national government must hypothecate road fund tax for transport exclusively, rather than adding it to the general pot of taxation (and while I'm on the subject, do the same for NI).
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
And I fear you've been listening to Ian Duncan Coughdrop a bit too much if you think he's a "classical socialist". For a "socialist", he's awfully close friends with the big City financial institutions. Hence what seems to have become a rubber-stamping process, rather than a planning review, when proposals for new glass towers in centrol London come up. Already the glass gherkin is joining the Nat West Tower and that abominable Adrian Viedt-style Canary Wharf tower in the docklands; there are three or four more, even less interesting, highrise office blocks on the proverbial drawing board (CAD display), which personally I think are a very bad idea - even *before* 9/11. God knows why people want to build more of those death-traps. But that's another issue.
Anyway, Livingstone and Labour (new OR old) haven't been the face of "radical politics" in this country since the 1970s; that honour goes to the Liberals, the SDP, and now the Liberal Democrats (result of merger of first two parties.) Remember who was the first to seriously propose decriminalisation of marijuana? Yeah, that was us. Now, if only we could get Blunkett to believe a real democratic voting system (some form of PR, rather than the present anti-democratic, wildly unrepresentative "system" that has changed little since the days of Rotten Boroughs) was a way to keep "Tone" Bleurgh in power for ever...
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
The idea is to relieve the roads for commercial traffic. You can get 1000 loaves of bread to Tesco much quicker if the road's not congested with thousands of private cars.
There are personal solutions to the tube overcrowding problem. The simplest, and the one I use, is to not work in London (I don't believe this is a facetious suggestion). If you feel you must work in London for some reason, how about negotiating flexitime so you don't travel in the peak hours? Employers are going to have to help with this situation too.
Telecommuting isn't an option for most people, really it isn't even an option for technical people like sysadmins. Yes, you can telnet over S/WAN and restart a mail server, that's trivial. But London is one of the world's financial centres; when there's a problem with an application consisting of millions of lines of bespoke code from half a dozen different vendors running on millions of pounds of hardware from another half dozen vendors (pretty much all IT in the Square Mile is like this), the only way to solve the problem is to get all the relevant people together in a room working on it. There is no alternative but for people to travel into London itself to work.
In the short term, these institutions can well afford to pay their employees' tolls for them, if they really think it's essential that they drive in. In the long term, they might consider moving their operations somewhere cheaper and easier to get to than central London. This would be a good thing all round.
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seems like a bad idea (Score:2)
Whilst I would agree normally, if they were truly public lands then they would be usable by everybody. In this case, the public land in question is demarcated for the sole use of car drivers (before you mention cyclists, very very little provision is made for cyclists - cycling in London is downright dangerous).
So, you could think of this as a fee not for using public land, but rather for having that land reserved for cars. I would hope that the money collected would be spent on improving public transport, so that those who are inconvenienced by this land use are properly compensated.
About what is expected (Score:2, Troll)
Yes, I called them "subjects". People who are that closely monitored by the government, and who are arrested and charged with a crime if they defend themselves against violent criminals, have ceased to be citizens. They are subject to the whim of the government.
Re:About what is expected (Score:2)
I prefer Austria's autobahn solution, with the windshield sticker and a tough reputation. Also, nasty-looking warning signs about how much more it'll cost you to drive "downtown" instead of using the convenient "park and ride" ought to cut down on traffic more than just hiking rates. If you offer alternatives, people will use them. Really.
(As to your "subjects" barb: Seeing as Great Britain is still a monarchy, you're technically correct. The rest of it, however, is a matter of opinion.)
Re:About what is expected (Score:5, Insightful)
I oppose the number of cameras being installed, and there is a growing resistance to more being installed, but we have a government that is actually very good at putting the right spin on its' actions most of the time. The issue of privacy hasn't been raised in the press or in the House.
There is a consensus that something has to be done on London's streets, and frankly, no-one has come up with a better idea. In case any non-UK people don't realise the scale of the problem, consider those quant oldie-worldie streets from the Victorian era now handle the traffic of approx 8 million people. That's about 12000 people per square mile on a straight average, and that's not accurate - there are population density peaks as you get within the inner 3 mile radius.
There is no other European capital with anything like these numbers of people in such a small place. It is comparable to some US cities, but because of its' history, has a much larger problem with traffic. No we don't want to knock it all down :-)
As an aside, a lot of the cameras are online ato co /camlist.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/travel/jamcams/caml
The last figure I've seen for the total number of cameras is ~230.
Simon
Re:About what is expected (Score:2)
On the subject of CCTV - I live in Brixton and I reckon there are 230 cameras HERE, alone. My local estate has about 25. These are run by the local authority (Lambeth in this case) rather an the police; personally, I think public CCTV should be mandatorily available on the Net to any random viewer to check. I believe that's the David Brin solution to ubiquitous surveillance?
On another note, there was a piece on the TV news last night about Taiwanese police having a dedicated squad searching for illegal concealed microcams in public spaces such as tubes trains, public toilets etc. Think about that for a bit.
Re:About what is expected (Score:2)
I take your point about Paris, but that's because it's miniscule compared to London, not because of the large number of people. Relatively, you are correct. Absolutely, you are not. [grin] Actually that sounds rather good - bound to be a quote from someone :-)
It all comes down to logistics in the end - if we were the same density as Paris, we'd be choking under a fog of pollution and starving because of a lack of supplies. We'd quickly all up-camp and move (apart from those who couldn't).
Completely with you on the Brin solution. If it's in the public good to be watched, then let right be seen to be done, as well as merely be done.
The number of cameras was just the best estimate I could find. I suspected it was low anyway, and thinking about it I reckon it must way off base. I retract the number ... I'd guesstimate about 20x230, given how many I noticed on the way into work.
Last Summer, they replaced all the lights down Oxford St. with blue bulbous things, but these lights also had cameras inside the blue bulbous things. I noticed that when they were being installed... Now Oxford St. is prime retail area, and probably a big target for thieves, but I still think there should be signs saying you're under surveillance...
Simon.
Re:About what is expected (Score:2)
OK, point conceded. And you do have a valid point that we can't forget: something has to be done.
The problem with the camera solution is that it's working from false assumptions. It treats cameras as being just as good as having a live human being covering the area, as if cameras can watch everything. The other problem is that it doesn't adress the simple problem of reducing traffic, just makes it more expensive.
As a matter of fact, it seems as if this scheme isn't really about reducing traffic, just about increasing revenue. And that stinks.
London's problems need a better alternative transportation system than what is offered. I doubt that the public transportation system could handle a large influx of commuters leaving their cars at home. You need a carrot as much as you need a stick.
BTW, I would have replied privately, but you don't seem to have left any contact info. Pity.
Re:About what is expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you care to provide some links to news stories to back up that claim? The farmer who was convicted of murder a couple of years back (I forget his name) doesn't count - shooting a fleeing burglar in the back with a shotgun hardly counts as self-defence.
As for the acceptance of the cameras, it is unfortunately true that most of my fellow Londoners appear to accept them. Those of us that don't are too few in number to do anything about them. Besides, do you really think that our Government listens to us? Consider the recent outcry about the proposed extensions to the RIP Act. David Blunkett eventually backed-down when his son told him that the proposals would make his job and those of people like him harder (he's some sort of sysadmin, iirc). Never mind the almost universal popular condemnation...
Cheers,
Tim
Re:About what is expected (Score:2)
>>against violent criminals
>Would you care to provide some links to news stories to back up that claim?
>The farmer who was convicted of murder a couple of years back (I forget his name)
>doesn't count - shooting a fleeing burglar in the back with a shotgun
>hardly counts as self-defence.
Tony Martin [free-tonymartin.org.uk]. And I counter that the burglar wouldn't have been fleeing if Mr Martin hadn't had a shotgun...
Matt
Murder rate in London... (Score:2)
Re:About what is expected (Score:3, Insightful)
note: this has been SARCASM.
Less of the terrorism nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it isn't. Please bear in mind that the UK has sadly been having to deal with terrorism, and attacks on its soil, for rather longer than the US. Anti-terrorist measure are a well understood thing in London, and the public certainly doesn't get to see all of it.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Less of the terrorism nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I find driving into the centre to be pointless. I work in London, but live about twenty miles west in Marlow and what I do is drive to the outskirts and get the Tube the rest of the way in.
I used to have to go near where you describe - I worked at Chase near Southwark bridge, about a five minute walk away. Now my journey is actually longer, and I have to get out to Canary Wharf. And this is my problem with the idea.
You see, my daily experience shows that the Tube can't cope with the existing numbers of passengers, let alone all the ex-drivers that they're trying to encourage down there. Basically, there's no public infrastructure capable of taking the extra burden caused by people dumping their cars in the centre.
That's the annoyance - because no alternative has been put in place, the whole thing essentially plays out as just being another tax. People who have to drive will still have to drive, because the alternatives are swamped already.
Bring on the crossrail project, that's what I say. Charge after that's in place (a virtually-non-stopping east/west link across the city, for those not familiar with the idea), rather than just punitively before anyone can do anything about it.
Cheers,
Ian
No more intrusive than a toll booth (Score:2)
All this does is extend this to ALL traffic.
The only problem as I see it is that I can be being charged for a service without having it made clear to me that I am going to have to pay.
What an outrage! (Score:3, Funny)
Bummer
Alex
New tube tickets (Score:4, Insightful)
With the new system you merely wave a card near a reader on the machine. London Underground are currently claiming that you shouldn't even need to take the ticket out of your bag. Ok, I've worked in buildings with card controlled access like this in the past, and I'm not sure this will actually work, but that is another rant.
Once these are accepted, all Joe Privacy invader needs to do is hook up these readers at entrances to stores, restuarants, etc.
The cameras have nothing on this!
Re:New tube tickets (Score:2)
What's illegal? Recently, Tony Blair's government investigated the background of a rail crash survivor. 32 people were killed, and she publicly criticized a government minister, Stephen Byers, for his lack of competence in running the railways. The government looked for anything it could use to discredit her, including her political affiliations (IIRC, she had none). It wants to extend the powers to do so to any government department, including local councils.
Unless you are willing to completely abdicate any rights that you have enshrined in law and completely trust all governments that may ever come to power in the future, you should be concerned about plans to track identities and movements.
Why not the other way round? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure People would like the idea of a free ride thru the city instead of spending money for fuel and wasting time in traffic jams...
Already done... (Score:2)
Personally I look on this as a tax on the rich who refuse to ride on public transport. Now if they only had decent cycle lanes for bikes and bladers I'd miss out on the tube section of my journey.
As a reference for our US cousins, it takes in rush hour around 20 mins to go from the 'burbs into the centre if you take the tube, it takes around an hour if you drive.
Re:Why not the other way round? (Score:2)
1) Public transport is already full to bursting point.
2) Pulic transport is practically non-existent between the hours of midnight and 5am.
The main reason I personally drive into the proposed congestion charging zone every working day is that the journey takes 45 minutes bay car, using about 1 pound of petrol, and by public transport it takes a minimum of 2 hours, and costs over 4 pounds. Also my car is air-conditioned (none of the public transport is) and is able to get me home if I work past midnight.
In my experience, most of the traffic congestion is due to taxis blocking the roads looking for (or picking up/dropping off) passengers, roadworks that are never finished, bad traffic light timing and because large parts of the road network are reserved for buses only.
Public transport infrastructure? (Score:2)
I thought London had a developed underground railway and train network? Pardon my ignorance, I've never been there - can anyone comment on what this comment meant?
--jquirke
Re:Public transport infrastructure? (Score:2)
More accurately, property owners said I don't care if my house got burned down, this is still my land. If you think that you can drive a nice wide avenue through it, you can piss right off.
London is a city which resists centralised grand plans in city layout. It organises from the bottom up, and always has done.
But that's hard-coding. Soft-coding like transport policy, that's different.
Worker's unite.. (Score:2)
If I was London right now, I'd join a union.
Forget about privacy invasion... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you own a car, you have no privacy.
The government already has all your personal details on record. Your address, date and city of birth, type of car (or cars) you own, approximate mileage you do in a year (although that bit's optional, but it's a good idea because it stops people tampering with the speedometer), and much more besides. It's all legally required for owning a car. Even if you own one, but don't keep it registered, you must register it as out of use and keep it off the road.
Just to recap, if you own a car, the government already knows about it. They're not really that interested in you though.
How is this an invasion of privacy? (Score:2, Informative)
So, what DO we have number plates for exactly? I thought it was to identify cars. How is taking a picture of you driving around in a public place an invasion of privacy? Oh, i know, im not allowed to know waht ure doing!! Well guess what, these people dont care WHAT you are doing, no matter how many conspiracy theories you put together. All they are interested in is finding nonpayers, same as the police are interested in finding speeding moterists with speed cameras.
Here in the UK, among motorists there is a growing feeling of being "picked on" by the police or government. We have traffic problems all over the place, and one of the governments manifestoes was to get people off the roads in private transportation, and onto public transportation. They are not doing this by improving public transportation, but by making it easier to penalise the motorist. Guess why? Cause theres so many motorists, a lot of them are bound to either speed, travel in bus lanes, or go places without paying tolls. And what can u get off these people? yep, fines. And that means more money to the government.
Schemes like this are not designed to reduce the number of cars as a primary concern, they are there as a money making revenue for the UK government. Oh, and considering their recent RIP bill and stuff, i wouldnt worry about privacy, its already taken care of..
A Londoner's perspective. (Score:2, Interesting)
I now ride my bicycle and in the 6 months I've been doing it I get to work much faster (28 minutes including riding up Muswell Hill!) but I have been smashed off twice by w**kers too frustrated to notice the bicycle in front of them. Anything that reduces the numbers of cars so buses can function and the remainder can flow is a good thing.
It's a vicious circle, and something has to be done to break the cycle (pun intended!). I'm interested in the subject and I've not heard of any alternatives that make sense in terms of London's particular mess.
The only thing I am disappointed about is the size of the zone isn't as large as it could be. Still, for a first-time-anywhere experiment it's damn ambitious.
I have a better idea (Score:2)
I have a better idea, one that saves money, helps the environment, and makes the city a much more pleasant place: convert much of the city center to a pedestrian zone (with the usual exceptions for deliveries and possibly small electric vehicles) and improve public transportation. There is no reason on earth why people should use cars in a densely populated European city center.
Heres a totally legal way around this... (Score:2, Interesting)
The bill is sent to the owner of the car, but only the driver of the car is liable, not the car itself. These fines have to ask you to disclose who was driving at the time, same as speeding offences. Just say you do not know who was driving at the time, that a number of people could have been driving. This has been used a number of times, and has been upheld in a court of law on several occasions (due to the UKs abysmal online record keeping, i cant find a link).
There ya go. Dont deny the car was there, cause its not the cars fault, jsut claim you cant tell who the driver was.
If only we had guns... (Score:2)
On a more serious note... *shrug* who cares? Cars are a menace, anything that discourages their use is a good thing in my book. (Hope that doesn't sound like a troll; it really is what I think.) Civil liberties angle? Pffft, this is the country where you can be jailed for five years for losing your PGP provate key, and the same again for telling third parties that the Govt. has seized your keys (and thus encrypted communication is compromised.) There are five CCTV cameras between me and my local pub. But I haven't been mugged (or in deed a victim of any crime) in 7 years in Brixton, supposedly the crime centre of the London inner city according to the Daily Fascis^h^h Mail. [dailymail.co.uk]
Not The Government (Score:5, Insightful)
Read about this Congestion Charging scheme here [london.gov.uk].
In fact, there is a challenge to this scheme being mounted in the High Court [bbc.co.uk] today (Monday).
The reason there are so many cameras in London, is because of all the terrorists who have kept trying to blow bits of it up over the years. Terrorists, largely funded by US Citizens, who have in the past come close to destroying parts of London's financial centre.
Personally, I think you have to be an idiot to want to drive into London, and I'm all in favour of this scheme, but I would like to see the charge doubled for people driving SUVs...
Re:Not The Government (Score:2)
He was (so he claims) also once approached by the KGB to become a spy, during his time as leader of the Greater London Council. He pointed out that he had made London a 'nuclear free zone' (this was in the cold-war era), and asked the recruiter if the Russians had made such a bold socialist move in Moscow. When the recruited said they had not, the man who is now our mayor said he was probably too socialist to join the KGB, and left
but I was driving away (Score:2)
More info about the area covered, technology, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Points:
License-cameras on taxis? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you consider an alternate use, this technology could be ground-breaking in beating crime. Say you have these cameras mounted on taxi cabs and police cars. They would get a list of licence plates for stolen cars, and would continually monitor all license plates that are seen. The list would be maintained on whenever someone would file a stolen car report. I really don't see how that would violate my privacy - no alarm would go off unless I had reported my car as stolen, and I would be very interested in having it intercepted before it was shipped to Eastern Europe and sold for bargain price to the local mob connection.
On the other hand, the London proposal is worse. You are assumed guilty until you prove yourself innocent (listed as a paying driver). Still, consider the alternatives. More traffic means more deaths and more sickness. The big question is then "is it worth it?". Well, is it?
This creates new problems and only moves the jams (Score:3, Informative)
London's road network has been improved and optimised over the years for the existing traffic flows, and suddenly the traffic will want to go in different direstions to avoid the tolls, messing up the traffic light timing and priorities in the surrounding areas.
There will also be a scramble to get out of the zone before the charges start in the morning, and an extreme reluctance to enter the zone just before the end of the charging time - at 6.25 pm, you have a choice, sit still for 5 minutes or pay £5. People will crawl about to avoid reaching the charging zone before he 6.30 pm end time, making a nightmare scenario for people trying to go home by public transport and private cars alike.
I guess the effects of these issues will be far worse than the original congestion, espeically as they will move traffic problems away from the shopping and business areas inside the zone out into the residential areas just outside.
Re:It's spelt license (Score:2)
Ah, the irony of a spelling mistake in a post complaining about spelling mistakes...
Cheers,
Tim
Re:It's spelt license (Score:2, Funny)
Moron.
Re:Civil Disobedience? (Score:2)
By its very definition, no, it is not permitted. If it were, it wouldn't be disobedience
I don't know what you'd be charged with, but you can bet you'd be charged with something. Consider this - if I came to your house each day, and taped newspaper over your windows, you'd have me arrested, right? Same principle - I'd be (temporarily) denying the owner of something the use of it. It would also cost them money to have someone remove the tape, and you can bet they'd want to recover that plus punitive damages. Finally, if I had to enter/climb onto any private property in order to reach the camera, you'd almost certainly be looking at a trespass charge.
So no, they can't charge you with destroying the cameras, but they'd find something to charge you with.
That's not to say I don't think it's a good idea, just don't go doing it assuming that you'll get nothing more than a chuckle and a shake of the head from the police.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Civil Disobedience? (Score:2)
Re:How is this going to work? (Score:3, Informative)
They don't bill you; you pay in advance.
Basically you go into a shop, give them your £5 and your registration number, and say "I'm going into London next Tuesday". Next Tuesday, if the cameras snap you, they consult the database and if you're there, fine; if not they pull your address from DVLA (UK version of the DMV for our American cousins) and fine £80 you in the same way they do people who get caught by speed cameras (post you a bill). (£40 fine if you pay up immediately)
You'll also be able to order on-line, on the phone, or by post.
It applys only 7.00am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, and various people are exempt; taxis, ambulances, the army, motorcycles, disabled drivers, buses, coaches, tow trucks, electric or gas cars. You get a hefty discount if you live in the congestion zone, although you still have to pay some of it.
As a side note, the posts for the cameras are already going up and damn they are big and ugly.
But I pay already (Score:2, Informative)
It also makes me angry when I see the government introducing this before upgrading the underground tube and the bus system.
Re:Roads for the rich (Score:2)
You mean public service workers in London are forced to take large packages with them to work every day? That is tough. I suppose they have to carry large wooden crosses on their backs all day too, right :-)?
Seriously, most of the people who drive downtown do so because they'd rather jump from their doorsteps straight into their comfy cars and listen to music while stuck in traffice, than have to sit/stand on public transit with the unwashed masses. If you think all those people clogging the roads are lugging around large parcels then you're living in a different world.
Re:Roads for the rich (Score:2)
The idea is to clear out the private traffic to make the roads better for commercial traffic. This will _encourage_ business to stay in central London rather than moving out to the suburbs. This is a _good_ thing.
It will, you are right, make life easier for the rich - since the rich in London travel via taxi (not Roller or Bentley...). It will of course make life easier for the poor to, who travel by bus.
The only large group of people who will suffer, are the very lazy, and the kids who like to cruise around in cars thumping out the music and whistling at girls.
Sounds good to me.
Re:Dumbness (Score:2, Informative)
Not if the vehicle does less than 8 miles a year on the public highway.
Not if the vehicle is over a certain age (ISTR it's 25 years, but may be wrong)
Not if the vehicle is a certain class of invalid carriage.
So no, not everyone has to pay some kind of road tax to drive a car.
> you dont have cameras all over the place scanning plates for that
Actually, they do. There are several systems in use by the police in the UK which scan registration plates as they pass and then cross-index with the PNC and licencing computers and alert the tax collectors (sorry, "Police Officers") to vehicles which are not taxed (amongst other things). That's one of the reasons why the legislation was recently changed to require a specific font for the number plate.
> most lawabiding citizens wont try to get away without paying if they have to show a permit in their window
Uhh...by definition, that should read "all lawabiding". If they're lawabiding they're not going to break the law. And lawabiding citizens are going to pay the road fund licence regardless of the presence of a permit or not (since, if they don't pay they cease to be lawabiding), On the other hand, there are plenty of people out there who drive untaxed/unmot'd/uninsured vehicles on British roads - I know, one of them drove into the back of my car when I was stationary earlier in the year. I estimate the direct cost to me to be in excess of £6000 _so far_. (I lost my NCB, I lost my policy excess, I lost use of my vehicle whilst it was being repaired etc. etc.) But then again, he wasn't a "lawabiding" citizen. And he did have a tax disc - it just wasn't valid (at least, not for the vehicle he was driving).
> allot of f*cking money.
Well, at least they'd be able to claim that some of the revenue raised from motorists was being spent on "transport" for a change...
> Issuing peices of paper and those little plastic sleave things to put them in - f*cking jack.
As I've already pointed out, there really isn't a need to issue the disc (since the final arbiter of whether your vehicle is taxed or not is the DVLAs computer records, not the presence or otherwise of a tax disc).
Of course, failure to display that disc is an offence seperate from failing to tax the vehicle, so it is another way of raising revenue from motorists.
Re:Driving on the Right (Score:2, Informative)
Here's an example of how bad the system is. I live about 1/2 a mile from a train station. Later this afternoon I have to attend a meeting in London - the building I will be visiting is literally right above an underground station (for anybody who's in the area, it's the BSI building in Chiswick High St - which is on top of Gunnersby tube station)
Estimated time to drive: 1hr 45mins (depending on traffic, it can take as long as 2hr 15 - but not this time of day)
Estimated time by train: 3hr 20mins (according to the timetable - last time I did the same journey it was almost 5 hours).
Oh, and even though my car isn't particularly frugal (maybe 20-22mpg) It's still way cheaper for me to drive than catch the train.
*IF* we had cheap, reliable, punctual safe public transport I'd use it. But whilst railway companies are increasing prices and killing passengers I'll stick with my car - even with fuel at £4 a gallon
Re:Good time to steal cars (Score:3, Informative)
You really believe that? Wanna buy a bridge?
> The underground is overcrowded and badly run,
Yes, but if you think that's bad go live somewhere like Birmingham for six months. Sad fact of it is that the London Undergound is one of the best mass-transit systems in the UK. (Scary, I know!)
Re:Solution (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that London does not have a good ring-road that lets people drive from one side to the other. This cross town traffic would be unaffected by parking fee increases in the centre.