Is London on a backward stride?

Anyone who drives in London knows it is a petrol guzzling, time consuming, nerve breaking exercise; and most of us embark on it as a necessity. “If you enjoy driving, avoid drive in the City” I always tell my overseas friends. It is expensive frustrating plus it spoils taking in London’s true beauty.

So when I read that TfL [Transport for London] has plans to install hundreds of average speed cameras, to enforce 20 mph zones and replace some existing speed humps. I was shocked, twice!

Once because the traffic is slow anyway – and the speed humps plus other speed controls seem to do the job adequately, some of them, like many of London Streets, might do with refurbishing but there is no need for replacing them altogether. And secondly, where is the money coming from, who will fork out for this adventure and at what cost to Londoners!? Wouldn’t improving the existing transport issues be a better investment and use of this money?

Especially as other counties are turning off their speed cameras – it makes TfL backwards moving – as for storing registration numbers on police and government databases, that is just UN-Conservative!