London’s street map looks like your granny’s varicose veins.

Travelling Within the City

I’ve lived in four major world cities.  Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and London, England.  In only one of those “metropoli” I had to drive.  You guessed it.  L.A.  Everybody does.  Though, there was that nearly three year period I had no car or driver’s license and had to take public transportation (mainly buses; before the trains) and ride a bicycle.  There was no Uber yet.  In L.A. you just have to have a car or plan on staying home and have everything brought in.  I suppose if you’re a big rich movie star you can do that.  You have a state of the art gymnasium in the basement of your mansion.  You have servants to prepare your dinner and shop for you.  And, nearly every business delivers these days, whether it’s a pizza joint with its own in fleet drivers or the market economy such as Postmates that will pick up and deliver nearly anything from a goat cheese pizza to a pair of sky-diving wings.

Other Cities Live and Breathe Transpo

New York has couriers on bicycles.   That’s a cool job I wanted to have. It’s one of those jobs that if I ever become rich and famous I would do.   Just to lose myself in the anonymity of real life grounding work.   Part of the joy of living in New York is getting around the city.  Getting lost in the masses of people walking the sidewalks.   Squeezing into a subway car at rush hour.   Hiding in the back of a yellow cab on your way uptown to dinner with friends.   It’s a major part of the life there.   San Francisco is the same in that manner, only with the magical city on the Bay, no matter what part of town you’re in – whether it’s the Haight or the Mission or the Marina, you’re in a completely separate and complete world unto itself.  You may not want or need to leave.  Public transportation is treated like a community exercise.  Everyone is polite and rudeness isn’t tolerated one bit.  People can be openly helpful, unlike New York, where you’re likely to get pick-pocketed or stabbed by someone asking for spare change.

London is its Own World

London, however, is an entirely different animal.  It’s a very organized town.  I say “town” though the population is about nine million and the city itself is both as concentrated as New York City and as spread out and vast as Los Angeles.   Central London is something else altogether.   Considered the hub of the city, Central London is where Bayswater meets the West End, between Charing Cross and Chiswick. I lived just on the western edge of the Congestion Zone.  Notting Hill.   Postal code: W11, the most desired area in terms of hipness and money and just next to W10, where Kensington Palace lays and indeed near W1, where Buckingham Palace is.

Congestion Charge Zone

Bayswater Road is the main thoroughfare east to west through the Congestion Zone like a scissor.   Black Cab drivers go that way, through Marble Arch to take you to Oxford Circus, Carnaby Street and The Strand.   Just around Speakers Corner of Hyde Park.   All off that is part of the CCZ, the Congestion Charge Zone.  What happens is if you drive your car through the CCZ 7:00am to 6:00pm Monday through Friday, you are charged a standard £11.50, with much bigger penalties levied for non-payment.  The idea was to reduce vehicle traffic congestion as well as help the environment.  In fact, all-electric vehicles are free of charge to pass, as well as some hybrids.

What?  We can’t smoke?  Oh, Ok

This is just the kind of social engineering that England does so effortlessly, so beautifully.   Like when in 2007, behind closed doors, Parliament implemented the outlawing of indoor smoking.   Were they smoke filled back rooms where this was decided?  Who knows. But, unlike in America, where something like a non-smoking law has to be voted upon by referendum, England is ruled by a much more paternalistic government. They make decisions for us like mommy and daddy.  I was okay with this, knowing that if they ever implemented a really stupid law, the citizenry would rise up.  But, everything over there is always done in the most mannered way.  If there’s a transportation strike, it’s usually just a one day strike, which is announced the day before.   And after the strike day, the busses and trains run again.   Smart.

America Was Founded by Improvisation

They say the Congestion Charge Zone has brought in hundreds of millions of British Pounds Sterling and reduced greenhouse ozone emissions by a whopping 20%.   Would us Americans ever go for something like this?   I can’t say.   Ultimately, we are much more independent that interdependent society.   We do what we want until someone tells us we can’t.   And, even then, we may sue them or worse.    Either way, I’d like to see a Congestion Charge Zone implemented in the mid-Wilshire area.  It would create havoc for a while.  Then the city would have to supply more buses and people would get on bikes and walk and figure it out.  After all, we’re America.  We were founded by improvisation.

Be safe out there.

Sag
7/20/17