Transport Correspondent Andrew Winstanley

Trafalgar Square was built in 1840 and named to celebrate the great victory against the French, but in the Mayor's war against the dominance of the car it was always a battle yet to be fought.

Congestion charging gave the Mayor and Transport for London the opportunity to redesign the area - favouring pedestrians and squeezing traffic.

After work was finished on the new layout in January this year, TfL said it was an improvement - making traffic flow more smoothly.

But talk to the motoring organisations and any taxi driver and they'll say the evidence on the ground is somewhat different. In fact they say the congestion there now is worse than it was before the work began.

But the idea of congestion charging has never been to make it easier for vehicles to get around - though at TfL they insist they certainly aren't anti-car.

Congestion charging has cut traffic in London

Congestion across the capital has been cut by forty per cent, and speeds are up from an average 8 to eleven miles an hour. Traffic lights have been rephrased, more 20mph zones are planned, and areas are being claimed back for pedestrians.

The pedestrianisation of the north side of Trafalgar Square is meant to be creating a 'world class square for a world class city'.

The redesign has been overseen by the architect Lord Foster, who was also chosen by Ken Livingstone to create the new City Hall on the South Bank. It includes an open-air 'al fresco' café, York stone pavements, full access for people with wheelchairs and pushchairs.

The new pedestrianised plans

The plan's costing around £25 million but the Mayor thinks it will rival the grand piazzas of Rome and Venice. But when visitors gaze south down Whitehall towards Big Ben they'll also stare down on a microcosm of London's traffic problems - illustrated by the King Charles Roundabout.

This is the new way traffic's marshalled around the main area. It's a small island, and often congested. It's estimated traffic flows before the work began were around 1.5mph, and now critics say they're even slower.

Again though, the question is who to believe. The surveys by motoring organisations have been of the straw poll type - but seem convincing when backed up by testimony from professional drivers like the taxi trade.

Still, TfL insist the option of doing nothing was not an option at all as congestion was threatening to strangle the centre. So what they've done with Trafalgar Square is discourage motorists - because word of mouth has it as a place to avoid - and at the same time reclaimed some of the streets for pedestrians and tourists to enjoy.

Take a Thames Tour of Rotherhithe including the home of London's whaling and timber trades

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