Buy 1080 (and a half) Teslas. Or nearly 59 million single Zone 1 fares. Or even taxi fares for Boris Johnson for the next 23,500 years. According to Transport for London, £94.4m is the total figure racked up in unpaid congestion charge penalties.
It seems foreign embassies are among the least likely to put their hands in their pockets with the US, Russian and Japanese embassies being the top non-payers totalling a whacking £30m. That's a lot of Ferrero Rocher. Mind you, TfL also reckon that over 700,000 penalties were cancelled after being wrongly issued or appealed which is a heck of a lot of mistakes, though we're warmed by TfL's reassurance that their 'robust' recovery procedures ensure that three quarters of penalties are collected, even if they weren't actually due in the first place.
Still, with all the green transport initiatives the Mayor is pushing for London, the c-charge take might go down, especially if Volvo get their way on a review of exemption criteria. According to TfL, £137m was raised via the c-charge in 2007/8 to be used for improving public transport.
How much does a bus cost anyway?
