Driving in London

London motorists, enjoy it while it lasts. You have never had it so good. Something tells me you will never have it again. This has been a metropolis unlike any I have seen. Yesterday, for just £5 I could cross the sun-bathed Thames at Westminster or descend the northern heights to Marylebone. Driving was a pleasure. Red tarmac was spread across the entrances to the city like a welcoming carpet. Empty boulevards stretched before me. Earth had not anything to show more fair. I strained to keep my speed to 30.

London is greeting the private motorist as returning hero. He can cruise down Regent Street and imagine girls throwing roses from upstairs windows. The West End is suddenly a city for gentlemen, where valets might flick dust from mudguards at traffic lights and policemen salute drivers at crossroads. Everywhere the mayor has erected a big letter C. Is this a champagne dispensing point?

The city has been amazing. At a cost of nearly £80 million a year, Ken Livingstone has made central London a haven for urban motoring. A quarter of the vehicles have vanished. Yesterday the only jams I could find were in bus lanes.

White vans had melted like snow. Cheap cars had disappeared altogether. Piccadilly was a publicity cavalcade for Mercedes and BMW. It takes a Marxist to know what the rich really want and give it to them.

And the poor? Ah, them. The Mayor has dealt with them. They are all underground, sweating in the salt mines of the Tube. They are cursing his policy. "Congestion charge" is a good description of what I saw yesterday at the Black Hole of Waterloo. On the Metropolitan line they were lying three deep on the seats. On the Jubilee they were trying to enter the Guinness Book of Records for "bodies in one carriage".

Rumour had it that the Central line was being readied as a morgue for hundreds collapsing onto live rails at Oxford Circus.

Yet there is no fear of revolution. Mr Livingstone has reassured the rich that as long as they keep stuffing £5 notes down Tube air-shafts, he will keep poor drivers out of sight.

And if any of the latter cheat by not paying, he promises to hit them for £80. That should clear even the middling-rich off the streets. So drive on, Carruthers, make the Drones Club in five minutes. We've not had such fun since Gussie Finknottle crashed his Hispano-Suiza through Maisie Hamilton's hat shop window in Dover Street. We must invite that splendid chap Livingstone for a G&T one day.

I repeat, this cannot last. So far this week drivers have reacted to the scare stories by staying away. They are not as stupid as the press predicted.

Traffic volumes both round and within the zone are down 20-25 per cent. Some of this may be half-term. But I am sure thousands of London motorists are simply holding off while they try to work out the system.

Some have clearly tried other means of transport, but most will revert to their usual conveyance. It is the perceived difficulty of paying, not the £5, that is the chief deterrent to driving up to town.

The impact on commuting has been intriguing. Monitors for Trafficmaster over the past two days reveal that the big cuts in radial journey times have been from points north and east, generally the poorer suburbs. Times from the rich south-west, along the M4, M3 and A3 corridors, actually rose compared with half-term last year.

Far from abandoning their cars, wealthier drivers appear to have guessed that central London is now a better place for them. They are right.

It must be the case that, once drivers learn to navigate the system, they will pay the £5. It is only £1 more than an hour at a meter. Firms offering free parking, which is never "free", must decide whether to increase the value of that benefit.

For delivery companies it will be like a rise in petrol duty, a cost to be distributed across the account. Some shops may lose, but buses, taxis and drink sales will gain. One delivery rider told me he can do an extra five runs a day, which is real money.

Some congestion will return. The utilities will start digging up roads again and children will go back to school. Mr Livingstone will have problems chasing non-payers. Kensington, Camden and Tower Hamlets will beg him to extend the zone. Much in the scheme will have to be changed. But this tax on wheels will stay. The real test will be whether the Mayor has the courage to raise the charge to £7 or £10 to earn more revenue, and make residents pay more than a lenient 10 per cent.

Londoners grew used to parking meters, which excited the same outrage as the congestion charge at "people paying to use the people's road". These are at present the Mayor's only ways of raising money to spend on public transport.

Eventually I predict that the impact on congestion will be negligible. Motorists will again feel persecuted. We shall all be back to square one.

But for the time being, any motorist can cruise the streets of London on a cloud of fivers. Mr Livingstone has buried the poor underground, and given the rich a taste of paradise. What a stupendous irony.