The rise and fall of Edinburgh's congestion charging plans

A referendum in February 2005 saw Edinburgh citizens reject a transport strategy for the city, including a proposed congestion charging scheme. The aims of the strategy were to tackle road congestion and to provide a public transport system to match the best in Europe. Congestion charging was seen by the Council as a key tool both to reduce demand for road space and to provide a revenue stream for transport investment. This paper focuses on the context for the development of the proposals, the hurdles involved in taking them forward, and the apparent contradiction between initial high levels of support for a ‘radical’ transport policy and eventual rejection of the proposed means of achieving those objectives. The paper postulates a number of reasons why this rejection may have occurred, based on the author's experience in the development of the scheme.