Mayor Boris Johnson praises congestion measures

Date: 14/3/2011

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has praised measures designed to ease congestion in the capital.

According to Transport for London, in the last year, incidents of serious delay or disruption to journey times in the city have fallen by five per cent, compared to 2009-10.

However, Mr Johnson said work would continue to improve these figures further still, particularly ahead of the Olympic Games next year.

"Much like an Olympic athlete you have to build up to these things, so we have put in a lot of hard work; there is a lot more to come and we are committed to making sure our roads flow as smoothly as possible when the world comes to London next year," he added.

Proposals to improve congestion further include charging utility companies if they choose to dig up the city's busiest roads at the times when traffic is heaviest.

Meanwhile, timings on hundreds of sets of traffic signals have been reviewed to reduce delays, with newly-installed technology allowing some lights to automatically alter their alerts to match the level of traffic.

European General Manager of Inrix Hans Puvogel recently claimed that the UK is doing a "much better job" of managing traffic congestion in its major cities than the US.

Posted by Mary Treen