Sex, Lies & Bus Lanes

in Featured by Jon C — June 30, 2011 at 7:26 pm | 1 comment

Here’s something about bus lanes you won’t read in the morning Shock death! Celebrity Sex Scandal! tabloid about the Bus lane issue the paper is obsessed about as it challenges the right of motorists to rule the road.
Compliance by drivers is actually increasing over time.

This Auckland Transport graph shows the number of bus lane infringements issued per month and the events that have driven the major infringement peaks starting in July 2007 till present.

Though the gross number of infringements has increased over the three year period the number of enforced bus lanes has increased three fold up to 21.
Therefore AT concludes the number of infringements per bus lane has dropped from an average of 300 in 2007 to 150 in 2011. This indicates that compliance by drivers is increasing over time.

The car travel distance for issuing an infringement increased from the 50 meters (the legal minimum) to 70 meters in an effort to make the process fairer. This has meant five bus lanes are no longer enforced as the bus lane is not long enough. This change occurred in August 2010.

AT have a six monthly independent monitor of driver compliance by Gravitas Research. This measures driver compliance over both morning and evening periods. The results show overall driver compliance consistently between 97-98% from 2006 to 2011.
AT says in a report to the Board that enforcement is vital to maintain bus lane efficiency; any jurisdiction that does not have some form of enforcement has poor bus lane performance.

“This is borne out in the local experience since enforcement of the Ellerslie bus lane has ceased due to it being too short to meet the 70m enforcement, compliance has dropped from 98% to 61% in the seven months since enforcement was removed. The Ellerslie bus lane will continue to be monitored in future surveys.”
That said, AT says a review of the policy and implementation guidelines for bus lanes and high occupancy lanes is nearing completion and will be reported to the Board shortly. This will include Bus Lane identification and the “70 metre rule.
It won’t satisfy the Car Advocate paper but it will satisfy those of who who seek fairness for all transport on the roads.
Good on you, Auckland Transport.
Bus lanes were introduced in Auckland in 2002 amd designed to give bus passengers faster and more reliable travel times by removing buses from the normal traffic flow and giving them their own lane.
Auckland has 26 designated bus lanes, most are time restricted to peak travel times, but four are permanent bus lanes.
Of the 26 bus lanes currently only 18 have active enforcement. This has varied; in 2007, seven bus lanes were enforced, this peaked in March 2010 with 21 bus lanes
enforced.
Each time a new bus lane was introduced a large number of infringement notices were issued to driver‟s who incorrectly used the bus lane. This occurred even though there was a staged introduction of the bus lanes with highly visible parking officers and warning letters being sent to drivers.
The report to the Board contains the understatement: “each introduction caused a high level of media interest.”
We know what nonsense it is referring to. No doubt there will be another big font shock headline article based on this followed by a predictable editorial.