DRIVERS could be charged up to £5.50 a day to enter Greater London and Canary Wharf could be moved into zone one in a redrawn Tube map under radical plans to restore the finances of Transport for London.
TfL’s detailed proposals of how it could break even in two years include the “assumptions” that the £3.50-a-day “boundary charge”, first proposed last month by Mayor Sadiq Khan, would include an additional £2 surcharge for more polluting vehicles, the Standard can reveal.
The 112-page document, submitted to ministers this week, also suggests extending zone one east to Canary Wharf to “reflect changes in London geography” and raise an additional £25m a year. This is because incoming commuters would have to pay higher fares if the station – and potentially the busy interchange at Canada Water – were moved out of zone two.
It came as Khan set out details of how fares would rise from March 1 – with the daily pay-as-you-go “cap” on multiple trips increasing by up to 3.3 per cent, bus fares rising by 5p but single fares in zone one being frozen.
A TfL spokesman said last night that a feasibility study would take six to nine months to complete and that no decision had been made to introduce the boundary charge. He said moving Canary Wharf into zone one was “just a potential option for the future”.
Mr Byford said TfL would need a further £3bn bailout from the Government before a combination of savings and income-generating ideas would allow TfL to become self-sufficient by 2023/24, as required by Ministers.