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Bus Lane Enforcement Works
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Last November, London began
aggressively enforcing the "bus only" priority of its 700 bus lanes.
By 2002, enforcement detection capabilities will have been increased by
600%, route monitoring by 333% and more than 100,000 summonses will be
issued per year. Even preliminary statistics show the success of this program.
By early July, commuters were saving over 10 minutes on the average
bus ride and reliability had gone up by as much as 12.5 per cent.
Some highlights of the London
enforcement program include:
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Installation of cameras that
detect and issue summonses - 900 on buses and 500 roadside. These take
pictures of offenders' license plates much like the NYC red light cameras
already in place.
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The 33 boroughs of London have
raised the fines for bus lane violations from $50 to $130.
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Fine income goes to fund further
improvements in transport, rather than into a general fund. The cameras
are expected to cost $25 million and added personnel time $8.25 million.
If the goal of 100,000 tickets is reached, the program will more than pay
for itself.
Only a dozen or so bus lanes
exist in NYC and of those, only the one on Madison Avenue receives any
level of enforcement. But with tickets of only $55 and a mere 9,421
summonses issued from July 1999-June 2000, even that lane is often
blocked. The numbers explain why the MTA once put out a report on bus service
called "Faster Than Walking?" and why the federal government rates NYC's
as the slowest big-city transit buses in the U.S. |
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MTR
#327 portable document format (PDF) file version
(requires Adobe Acrobat).
Related Articles and
Links
Peds
2, NYC Buses, 0 - May 14, 2001
Policing
NYC's Bus Lanes - June 17, 1998
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