Backdown on bus lanes

Photo / Paul Estcourt

Auckland City Council has hit the brakes on bus lanes. It says it will now treat motorists more leniently and fairly and will push lawmakers to cut the $150 fines nearly in half.

The backdown follows a Herald campaign over flaws in bus-lane policing - hundreds of motorists have expressed anger over a lack of warnings and leniency.

Thousands were stung a total of almost $6.2 million in fines in the year to June.

Yesterday, the council announced it intended lobbying the Government to reduce the $150 fine for driving in bus lanes to what the city's transport committee says should be a "more appropriate level".

Chairman Ken Baguley said he believed a fine of $80 - the amount for using a cellphone at the wheel - would be fairer. "I think the level of the fine is a bit over the top but that wasn't our decision."

Transport Minister Steven Joyce said last night that the Government would consider the committee's request. "I stress once again that enforcement authorities need to ensure they apply a practical, sensible approach to enforcement and don't get too pedantic and bloody-minded about it," he said.

Stung into submission by public anger, the council's transport committee approved a raft of compromises yesterday at the last meeting of its three-year term.

These include directing staff to issue tickets only where motorists use bus lanes "well in excess" of the statutory 50m allowance for vehicles making left turns, and letting them off if they have made genuine attempts to avoid cutting off buses at intersections.

Mr Baguley said that would allow left-turning motorists to nose in behind buses at safe distances from intersections, rather than trying to cut in at the last moment, an idea raised by the Auckland Tramways Union on behalf of concerned bus drivers.

The committee also decided that bus lanes should be marked right up to and through intersections where possible, to avoid confusing motorists as to where they stop and start.

It has even undertaken to refrain from carrying out enforcement at locations "where in order to comply with the bus lane, the road layout clearly encourages unsafe driving".

Mr Baguley said that was likely to include portions of Albert and Symonds Sts with broken sections of bus lanes.

Councillors decided against introducing 50m signs, after accepting findings from a recent trial that they did not change driver behaviour.

The committee heard it would also be impractical and confusing to mark out tolerance zones before every exit point and intersection along the length of bus lanes.

Many complaints to the Herald have been from drivers saying they needed more than the 50m allowance to turn left without holding up other traffic and risking collisions.

The row has caused the council deep political embarrassment since revelations that it had a target to ramp up income from bus lane and parking fines in order to hold down rates, exposing Mayor John Banks to jibes from his main Super City leadership rival, Manukau Mayor Len Brown.

Mr Brown, whose council issued just six tickets last year over its 3km of bus lanes, compared with Auckland City's 41,169 for its 36km network, has said that if he wins the Super City mayoralty, "we will not be using tickets as revenue support".

Mr Baguley believed his committee had made a set of pragmatic decisions in the hope that people could "accept that there are bus lanes and that there's a wider good that all of us motorists who drive around with just yourself in a car have got to recognise".

"But it's got to be fair and people have to drive according to the rules."

Auckland motorists were last night cautious about the Auckland council's moves.

Quay St, which regularly has a council infringement officer operating a camera, drives Stewart Germann around the bend so much that in July - during the height of public anger over the bus-lane issue - he wrote to the Herald saying that "when it rains and is windy I am hoping his camera falls over into the bus lane and is run over by a bus".

Mr Germann rates the overall solution a 3 or 4 out of 10. It's a low score because of the council's refusal to adopt signage to mark 50m.

The council's transport committee accepted research findings which said there was no evidence to say that 50m signage changed driver behaviour.

"That's a cop-out," Mr Germann said. "When I'm driving, I'm always looking for a sign; there's got to be something big that you can see.

"If you see a sign warning you that you can now turn in here safely, you learn quickly. Otherwise you're just guessing. They should be trialling a sign to see whether behaviour will change."

Motorist Dr Ian Calhaem received a $150 bus-lane fine in March. He was more annoyed the council took no notice of a report he sent its staff that outlined the deficiencies in signage and road markings related to where he received the fine.

Signs and road markings didn't have to be complicated, he said.

Another driver, Gary Barkhuizen, said he was pleased that greater tolerance would be applied for motorists who were trying to take the safest option.

"Cutting-in is the worst thing ever and it's impossible to do."

- ADDITIONAL REPORTING: YVONNE TAHANA