Driver-only cars should face fee in urban areas

Although I am a non-driver, and do not have the use of a car, I have no objection to the use of a car for jolly family jaunts.

If every car contained four people (an efficient use of transport), there would be no congestion and minimal pollution.

Alas, nearly all car journeys are driver-only. Officially this is about 95%, but I have done traffic monitoring (as part of a team) and we found that in four hours of monitoring a fairly busy road, hundreds of cars passed by, and not one contained a passenger.

On weekdays the only passengers are children on the “school run”, and even at weekends passengers are rare.

I think that in busy urban areas there should be a “driver-only” charge.

This could be enforced by automatic cameras taking photos of every car, as is done with vehicles entering the congestion charge zone in central London.

Cars with one or two passengers would pay less, and those on a family outing (four people), nothing at all.

This would encourage carsharing or more use of cycling, as in the Netherlands.

Obviously, the placing of blow-up or other dolls in passenger seats would be a serious criminal offence.

I see that the latest PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) figures place the cycle-loving Netherlands top on 67.2 (above Germany on 66.4, and us on 60.9; figures above 50 are positive).

So much for the lazy argument that unrestricted car use is necessary for economic performance.