KEY POINTS:
Impatient North Shore motorists are strapping inflatable dolls and shop mannequins into their seats to try to fool officers checking that transit lane users have two or more passengers in a car.
Traffic moves much faster in these lanes on the city's severely congested arterial routes and they are encouraging car pooling for the daily commute across the Harbour Bridge into Auckland City.
Council staff work in pairs monitoring the lanes, which are also for buses, taxis, cycles and motorcycles.
Any vehicle that appears to be breaking the rules is photographed by one of the team. The other checks the vehicle further down the road to confirm how many people are inside.
This provides evidence for issuing $150 tickets.
The council issues on average about 20 a day and has racked up $80,000 some months.
"Small numbers of people continue to wrongfully use the lanes and some have resorted to creative ways to try to get round the rules," said council traffic and safety enforcement manager Andre Dannhauser.
Drivers had even put blow-up dolls, mannequins and dogs in passenger seats as well as a favourite trick - placing pillows in baby seats to resemble babies.
"People see someone do it and try it. It's not always the same ones. If it's a cold morning and they oversleep and are running late, they will chance the odds," said Mr Dannhauser.
"We never cease to be amazed by the antics that people come up with - and their excuses."
Some people claimed they had small children sitting low in the back who could not be seen by the camera.
One driver, when stopped with only one other person in his vehicle, claimed a third person was lying in the large toolbox on the back seat.
Then there is the bane of the officers' life: heavily tinted car windows. "Even without that, it's hard to tell how many people, especially small children, are inside when the windows are up," Mr Dannhauser said.
"It would be helpful if drivers simply wind down a window to make it clear how many people are in the car."
He said officers had concentrated on Onewa Rd, Northcote, because of the high traffic demand but random checks had increased on Akoranga Drive, Shakespeare Rd, Constellation Drive and Forrest Hill Rd.
Four years ago, two enterprising Northcote College students took advantage, albeit briefly, of the lure of the transit lane on Onewa Rd.
For a few dollars, they hopped into several cars and travelled down Onewa Rd with them, so the drivers could use the transit lane.
In Manukau City, bus lane enforcers also hear some creative excuses.
The pick of them was a woman who was ticketed twice and accused the council of "cutting and pasting" the original film footage of her into the second.
When shown the video of her car with a passenger and a bus, she replied that the council had put the addition in and, because the operator had good computer skills, it showed her driving down the lane.
Bus lane bludging is rife in Auckland City. More than 13,000 fines for it were posted in the year to June 2007.
