"Richard J." wrote:

Walter Briscoe wrote
on 24 November 2010 07:28:44 ...

This morning's 0655 BBC London news says that BorisBikes will be
available to casual users from the third of December.
I failed to find the relevant press release.

However, I did find:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/congestioncharging/17096.aspx
I expect this to provide a significant improvement.

Currently, if you don't make manual arrangements to pay the CC and incur
a congestion charge, you incur a penalty charge.
I live within the Congestion Charge area and can claim the 90% residents
discount. I pay for a year in advance to avoid that Penalty Charge risk.
This modification to the scheme will mean I won't need to do so.

Note that you are charged £10 annually just to be registered for CC Auto
Pay, which makes it less attractive to people who only incur the
congestion charge a few times every year. (It will take 10 visits for
the £1 discount to pay for the registration fee.)

Indeed - though I suppose it's still cheaper than the £120 (or £60 within 14
days) penalty charge, for those who find themselves capable of unwittingly
driving into the zone. I know some people who'd benefit from this scheme as
they've managed to drive into the zone without realising (daft I know) and
get PCN'ed a few times, thing is I'm pretty sure they won't actually take
advantage of it! For a start they'd need to get round to actually
registering for it, then there's the hassle of yet another online account
and hence password to forget, plus the need to keep the account in order by
ensuring that there's a valid payment card associated with it, and lastly in
at least one case there could be the fear that whoever the account holder is
would end up paying out lots for journeys into the zone that they had
nothing to do with as the car is a kind of shared arrangement. They'll
probably see the light after a further PCN or two!