Bus lane signs being ignored, study suggests

The bus lane on Remuera Rd. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Drivers straying into Auckland City bus lanes have taken little notice of signs showing where they can lawfully enter the lanes to turn left, says a council-commissioned research project.

They were deterred only by the sight of enforcement officers wielding video cameras, the city's transport committee was told yesterday.

Parking group manager Dale Clements also said infringement rates during morning peak periods were noticeably lower than during the afternoon rush home, implying that driving behaviour was "not about ignorance of bus lanes but about willingness to comply".

"Unsurprisingly, people are in a greater hurry to get home than they are to get to work," he said in a report on findings by an independent research agency from a four-week trial of bus lane signs.

Some of the signs were aimed at letting drivers know when they were within 50 metres of intersections and therefore entitled to move into bus lanes to make left turns.

Since many recipients of infringement notices had complained of not knowing they were outside tolerance zones, Mr Clements said he was surprised that the signs had made little difference to drivers' behaviour.

"The largest decrease in infringements occurred as a result of having a bus lane camera present, plus a 'camera operating' sign," he said.

He disclosed that during the first week of last month's trial, there had been no enforcement of bus lanes covered by it.

Infringement levels at four sites ranged from 4.9 per cent to 15.9 per cent, or almost one in every six cars.

When enforcement cameras arrived back on the scene, the rates dropped to between 1.4 per cent and 5.3 per cent.

"Therefore, without enforcement, the bus lanes would be rendered less effective," Mr Clements said.

He said one woman who complained about not knowing where the 50m tolerance zone began was filmed driving 180m along a bus lane in Khyber Pass Rd.

The researchers had also found evidence of a strong "herd mentality" in which once one motorist decided to use a bus lane, others followed.

Committee members decided against introducing 50m signs after accepting that they did not change driver behaviour and that this would be impractical and confusing to mark out tolerance zones before every exit point along the length of bus lanes.