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news
Junction of Horton Square and Belgrave Middleway (source Google Street View)Birmingham's new bus lane cameras catch 780 offenders a day - netting council more than £1.7m in just 11 weeks
Ten new bus lane enforcement cameras have caught almost 60,000 drivers in the first 11 weeks of use - a rate of 780 per day.
If all motorists pay the reduced rate of £30 per fine for paying on time, the city council could bring in more than £1.7m from the scheme.
According to a Freedom of information requests from the Birmingham Mail, fines issued from September 3 to November 15 peaked in the first week of October, and there was an amnesty at the start of November, under which multiple tickets issued within minutes of each other were condensed into one fine, bringing the total number down.
Only 933 appeals were made and up to November 15 only 272 cases were upheld.
The camera on Priory Queensway has issued almost a third of the tickets, with locals complaining that many of those affected will have been visiting Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Many have said that the bus lane signs are inadequate, meaning drivers are unaware they could be caught.
Ben Cheney, of Wylde Green, Sutton Coldfield, told the Birmingham Mail: “I challenge [the city council’s transport chief] Councillor Ali to meet me in Steelhouse Lane and walk the route into Priory Queensway. I will show him how poor the signs are.”
But Mr Ali said: “We have people blatantly driving in bus lanes. We have big symbols on the road and on the lampposts. They are not taking notice and should expect a fine.”
Tempers have flared over bus lanes in Birmingham in recent months, with a group of cyclists described as “vigilantes” following an incident in October in which it is claimed a taxi was surrounded by riders, with one of the vehicle’s wing mirrors ripped off. The vehicle was attempting to use a bus lane from which taxis are excluded.
The cyclists were taking part in a flash ride organised via Facebook to urge Birmingham City Council to enforce rules that prevent black cabs, also known as Hackney Carriages, from being driven in some bus lanes in the city.
Campaigners blocked the junction of Belgrave Middleway and Horton Square in Birmingham so that only buses and cyclists could use the lanes designated for them. A taxi driver, Abid Hussain, attempted to drive down the bus-only lane and was blocked by campaigners.
After the stand-off that developed, Mr Hussain claimed: “They [the cyclists] were a law unto themselves. I couldn’t move anywhere because of the sheer numbers.
“These people on two wheels, who don’t even pay road tax, were acting like vigilantes.”
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29 comments
I really loved reading your blog. It was very well authored and easy to understand. Unlike was Additional Blogs Which I Have read are really not good.
Think how much councils and police forces could make with cameras on every ASL, traffic light, bike and bus lane. Maybe repeat offenders could mitigate the costs by taking bikeabilty courses.
And the final sentence: the good old "cyclists don't pay road tax" chestnut?
There's a sign apparently saying left turn for buses and cyclists only and a sign saying turn left all other traffic. If that's not confusing what is?
A true measure of the effectiveness of the cameras will be if the rate of fines now starts to drop steeply. If they don't, well, there's no helping the stupidity of people and the council will have a new revenue stream...
The law is the law. Adhere to it.
Near the children's hospital can be a pain. If there is no parking and you have to drive around again, it's a long route. The bus lane let's you just go around the block again. On local radio a woman from out of town did just that and got 3 tickets in the space of 10 minutes.
Yes driving in bus lanes is wrong, but let's think this one through. Inadequate cycle infrastructure, inadequate public transport. 71% of people in west midlands use cars to get to work. There isn't even a coherent ticketing system in place across public transport. In Hong Kong one contact-less card is good for buses, taxis, trains, trams, underground and local convince stores. I don't know what kinda nonsense system they have here, different companies with different ticketing systems.
But it's OK because we live in a 1st world country. Well guess what, Great Britain is no longer great. I refuse to believe that this is the best that can be done. Someone freeze me and wake me up in the future.
Are there roads, yes/no? I seem to believe there are so there are plenty of facilities to cycle on. Average journey length? a few miles? so perfectly possible to cycle, maybe the issue is laziness. No point beating around the bush on this, most people choose to drive, because it is easy and they are lazy. If you want people to stop driving then it has to be harder than the alternatives. If this means driving around and around in circles for hours because you can't park, tough. There is no easy way to get people out of cars, the UK has been wedded to the idea that big car means successful that cars equal freedom.
What needs to happen is a change in mind set. That a car is a useful tool for some journeys but that other tools make more sense for other journeys.
Oyster Card seems to work pretty well in London.
Bus deregulation don't you just love it! Outside of London the system is a joke! Where I am the same journey is run by different companies with different rules at different times, and the tickets are not compatible across the companies.
If she failed to see the signs and markings on 3 separate occasions in the space of 10 minutes then she shouldn't be on the road.
The SPT in the West of Scotland operate a zone card which covers Glasgow and the Strathclyde Region. Most of the bus companies are part of it, as is Scotrail and the Underground. I don't know about the rest of the UK apart from the Oyster Card. Maybe councils and transport companies just needed to get their s*** together and sort something out.
No better (worse in fact) than cyclists' excuses for RLJing.
I must be saving drivers a fortune, point the signs out to probably 3 a day on average.
Apart from Range Rover drivers, I let them go up the bus lane :).
So the signs are not clear enough????? Go read the highway code the paint on the floor gives a bloody good hint as to where the bus lanes are...
Opticians next port of call?
woah ..... cash cow!!
woah ..... cash cow!!
So big(ger) pay rises and bigger Christmas parties at Birmingham Council!
Well, to be fair, large numbers of cyclists are also drivers: this is what they do when they're not on their bikes!
That's it, these aren't drivers, they are cyclists who are in cars. Thank god for the clarification i was starting to think drivers might break the law.
Whilst of no particular relevance to cyclists, there's a bus lane up to Five Ways from Broad Street that's always clogged with cars. If you gave Bus drivers a camera & paid them commission, that junction alone could significantly help B'ham CC pay off it's (massive) equal opportunities debt ! The National Debt ,ay take a little longer.
Birmingham will soon be able to pay off the national debt, thumbs up for bus lanes!
just read that cornwall example,
It really does beggar belief that people feel they are being wrongly prosecuted. They drove in a bus lane, they got caught...
I know there is a bus lane near me, it runs from 7am till 7pm if you read the small sign, but the big sign is BUS LANE. If you hadn't spotted the small sign would you assume that it is ok to drive in it????
I guess it is the same mentality that makes hazards ok when parking on double yellow lines, etc etc.
The council in Plymouth did the same last year, extra million in the account.
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Drivers-furious-Plymouth-s-1m-bus-lane-f...
Makes me smile that drivers are disgusted that the cameras are mounted so high that they cannot see them and so get caught.
Could we not make it compulsory for all the drivers that appeal on the grounds that the signage was poor to sit an eye test and then when they fail have their licences revoked?
I find the best way to avoid fines for driving in bus lanes is to not drive in bus lanes
I suspect it is true that there will be some who were unaware of the restrictions due to missing the signs. However the majority, by far, will simply have thought they could get away with it. Now they know they can't.
If they want cyclists done for breaching traffic regulations, then they can't moan about the same happening to car drivers (and vice versa, of course)
Having spent ages trying to figure out where the bus lane is on the Priory Queen's Way, thanks to google street view showing the original signage (http://bit.ly/IoybwN) you can see it is totally inadequate, you know you would have thought they would have written in big letters on the road it was bus and clyse lane only, oh wait they did, well they should have had those big red no entry signs up, ah wait a minute I see them.
So what is the excuse?
Hopefully the 1.7 million will be used wisely.
More excuses from #bloodydrivers who don't think the law should apply to them.
Keep seeing drivers use a short bus/cycles only stretch to beat traffic queues. Actually see drivers doing it both ways dispite it being no entry at all one direction.
They all know damn well whet they are doing. Plonk a plod on the corner and they will all suddenly behave
what was it about cyclists jumping red lights....
Maybe If the drivers were travelling at legal speeds, looking where they were going, and basically concentrating on DRIVING, they might see the signs... just saying....