On Feb 4, 1:00*pm, Paul wrote:

On 4 Feb, 12:40, "Zen83237" wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8497509.stm

Oxford St is congested so let's remove all the buses. What next, Victoria is
congested let's remove the trains.

Part of the problem is the increased number of buses that were put on
before the Congestion Charge was introduced. Brilliant thinking - ie,
Increase the number of buses along Oxford Street to cope with the
congestion charge, and then complain that Oxford Street is congested
and start to reduce the number of buses.

A few points...

(1) This is a report from the Assembly's transport committee - the
role of the Assembly is to scrutinise and make suggestions, but they
don't really hold any executive power, that's in the hands of the
Mayor. So this is not an announcement of something that's about to
happen, merely a report that makes some suggestions - though it will
likely find a sympathetic ear with Boris.

(2) I'm not sure how directly you can directly link the extra buses
running down Oxford Street with the introduction of the congestion
charge, There were new bus routes introduced as a result of the CC -
an example is the 148 Shepherd's Bush to Camberwell, but this
conspicuously avoids Oxford Street, running instead down Park Lane
from Marble Arch. Of course overall the number of buses running in
London greatly increased over the past ten years, but that wasn't a
direct result of the CC, more a result of Ken's overall policy to
encourage people to use public transport, and buses in particular
(which, as the ridership figures show, was successful) - in other
words, the increasing number of buses was a part of the overall
transport strategy, which included the CC and many other things.