> Unless your job requires driving, there’s no incentive to drive in central London.

Then nobody does it?

That's not quite how these things work.

There's no incentive (other than a bit of ephemeral fun) for a person to drink until they pass out, but people do it anyway.

Humans are not perfectly rational utilitarian beings - and we shouldn't be. There's nothing wrong with a bit of fun here and there.

But when that fun negatively affects others (and tens of thousands of fume belching cars driving through your street as a rat run certainly falls in that camp) we should act.

What does the word “incentive” mean to you?

People do drive in London, so they have their reasons (however unreasonable they may look to you). And probably “fun” is down on the list.

Unless you think, Berra-style (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/29/too-crowded/), that nobody drives in London because it’s too congested. But in that case there would be no need for congestion zone charges to de-incentivize something that nobody was doing anyway.

I get your point but you’re also missing the fact that there will always be a need for private hire vehicles (taxis, Uber, chauffeurs, etc), buses, delivery drivers and other goods vehicles too. Some of the streets I’ve worked in were congested just with those types of traffic and the incentives there are pretty clear: they’re getting paid to driving in central London.

Clearly there are going to be people who fall outside of that group and still choose to drive. As I said in my other post, you’ll always get statistical outliers. But for the vast majority of people who live and/or work in London, we will use public transport, bike, or walk. Some of us might drive into Greater London and pick up the Tube. But very few of us would contemplate driving into central London as part of our daily commute.

Of course not everyone can take their car to the city center every day. It's physically impossible. We agree that the vast majority of people won't, we agree that there are still enough people doing it (very few, but many nevertheless) to create congestion and other problems.

You can defend that charges, restrictions and other disuasory measures are a good solution to diminish the use of private vehicles and its impact. But it doesn't make sense to say that those people have no reason to drive in central London unless they are paid to do so.

Sure, “little” would have been a better term to use but the context of my post was well established. If your only quibble was the use of that solitary word then you’re being pointlessly pedantic.

Note that I was not replying to you in my first comment, I was replying to esotericn's "interpretation" of your comment as people not acting as rational utilitarian beings when they drive in London.

Most people don’t. However there will always be statistical outliers when talking about human trends.

In a survey from 2015, almost 40% of vehicle commuters in London used a car[1]. That's not "statistical outliers".

[1] https://files.lsecities.net/files/2015/09/New-Urban-Mobility...

We are talking about central London, not Greater London. Greater London is a massive area which has leafy suburbs and wide areas without congestion. Central London is where the worst of the problem is, where we have been discussing, where the congestion charge zone is, and where you (generally) wouldn’t see people commute to by car.

For what it’s worth, part of my commute is via car too. However I do then get the train into central London. So I would still be classed as a driver

Fair enough. If nobody has an incentive to commute to central London by car, why the need for a congestion charge?

The points are mutually inclusive. The congestion charge is one of the reasons why there is little incentive to drive in central London.