~Manchester City Council~ is set to start enforcing bus lanes in September. The plans will come before the council – where members are said to be ‘receptive’ of the idea – in May, and Manchester hopes to be the first authority outside London to be operating enforcement.
Borough enforcement has been hailed as a huge success in London where, during a pilot scheme in Croydon, the number of instances of vehicles being caught in bus lanes fell from 3,750 to 127 in just six months. But the scheme has also caused the number of penalty charges being issued to swell, as the number of boroughs taking it on has risen (Surveyor, 14 October 2004).
Manchester believes the plans will help it achieve a local public service agreement target to secure a 3.6% increase in trips to the city centre to be made by ‘means other than the private car’ by the end of March 2009. Enforcement is likely to focus on the Chorlton bus corridor to improve bus times, encourage greater use of buses, and also improve the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.
A spokeswoman for Manchester said: ‘We already have CCTV in place, which could be used as part of the enforcement. ‘We would also be looking at backing that up with mobile cameras in hotspots where we know there are lots of violations.’ She stressed that the council would not be taking ‘a Draconian’ approach, and would initially, simply send out letters to offenders ‘telling them what we are doing and asking them to stop’, in line with government guidance to not alienate the public published, last autumn (Surveyor, 17 November 2005).
The proposed fine is £60 – or £30 if paid within two weeks – it would be carried out in-house and is likely to take advantage of the same process currently in use for the enforcement of parking restrictions. Several other local authorities are likely to include the implementation of bus lane enforcement in their local transport plan 2 documents, due to be submitted to the Department for Transport next week.
As Surveyor went to press, a meeting of the full council of Brighton & Hove City Council was due to decide on whether or not to take on bus lane enforcement. But a spokeswoman said that, if councillors accepted the proposal, the authority would need to establish an appeals system, which was ‘some months off’.
~Oxfordshire County Council~ has also proposed the introduction of bus lane enforcement cameras in its LTP2 – allowing the authority to finally take on the powers it had called for when it wrote its first LTP six years ago.
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