In a jam over congestion

Your article on London's congestion charge (Congestion charge faces late payment jams, January 18) highlights a great contradiction. The aim of the scheme is, we are told, to reduce unnecessary traffic in central London. Yet those affected are not people needlessly bringing a vehicle into central London but business owners who have to use a vehicle for business purposes.

Transport for London has failed to recognise the difference between commercial and non-commercial traffic. Businesses need to make and receive deliveries; they need to have access to their customers. That is why the congestion charge is so manifestly unreasonable.

Ken Livingstone told the House of Commons in May 1999 that he did not favour a flat-rate tax like the poll tax. That is precisely what he has introduced - a levy on businesses and on economic activity.
Nicholas Winch
Federation of Small Businesses

· There is one obvious solution to late payment problem you highlight. It is to allow motorists to buy credits in advance for entering the zone, just as you can on toll bridges in New York. That way, motorists who make irregular visits could pre-pay for 20 entries, and then keep topping up their credits. That would avoid jamming the system with one-off payments, as presently planned.
Peter Gillman
London
petergillman@clara.co.uk

· Congestion charging cannot claim to be a fair way of dealing with the problem. As an alternative one car to each postal address might seem a fairer way of sharing the limited road space. Thus the number of cars clogging up the streets of our cities would be limited. Car sharing would take on a new meaning. An incentive to households without a car to remain that way might be to offer rate relief.
Ian Innes
Dinas Powys, S Glamorgan