RE: You Are Being Watched
Monday 7th January 2008
PistonHeads has unearthed a document that seems to have passed under the radar, which outlines exactly what Transport for London is doing to catch out motorists.
You Are Being Watched
TfL document shows how motorists are being monitored
The papers were presented at the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress at the end of 2007 and have been put up on the TfL website.
The documents show that TfL is now responsible for the largest camera enforcement operation in the country and is doing everything possible to nail drivers.
It maps out the latest in digital traffic enforcement and appears to show how CCTV is going to play an ever increasing role.
It may not make pleasant reading but if you want to find out how the Government is keeping an eye on you then click here to read 'Traffic Enforcement in the Digital Age'.
Discussion
Some people I know with were invited to look at a buslane camera enforcement system in Oxfordshire.
They were expecting to be bombarded with technology, numberplate recognition cameras etc but were presented with a chap with a notepad watching a monitor run of a traffic camera.
More often than not he missed the number plate or couldn't make it out on the screen, don't know how many of their prosecutions were sucessful...
They were expecting to be bombarded with technology, numberplate recognition cameras etc but were presented with a chap with a notepad watching a monitor run of a traffic camera.
More often than not he missed the number plate or couldn't make it out on the screen, don't know how many of their prosecutions were sucessful...
I can't see the problem - it only takes one numpty bit of parking in a bus stop to force the bus to stop in the road, blocking all the traffic behind it as well.
Where I live in Bournemouth, double yellows are regularly ignored, bus stops used as waiting areas for private cars etc, leading to a massive degradation in terms of journey times and also safety as cars are squeezed in by illegally parked vehicles.
Where I live in Bournemouth, double yellows are regularly ignored, bus stops used as waiting areas for private cars etc, leading to a massive degradation in terms of journey times and also safety as cars are squeezed in by illegally parked vehicles.
OK! so congestion is a problem and not helped by inconsiderate ars'oles who think they can do what they want when they want, but does it really warrant such an investment in equipment and other resources. If only the same priority was given to the scumbag drug dealers (which are the root cause of most street crime) you might just consider walking instead of driving into town especially at night. Mr Livingstone can get away with it in London but provincial towns will die if they keep going down this road because people are getting hacked off and, eventually, will stop going into centres all together and stick to out of town retail parks. Expect a law to forcing out of town retail parks to charge extortionate parking fees to appease the town centres stores dying on their feet.
pdf said:
When the Mayor was elected, he set targets for increasing patronage of the bus network and reducing private car use - as such buses needed to be given priority on the roads
This is the key message of the paper. The same thing is happening elsewhere in the country too, eg. bus-stop laybys are being removed to prevent cars overtaking buses when they stop, etc.It's quite clear that the message we drivers are meant to receive is "private transport bad, public transport good". Everything possible will be done until we capitulate.
Peter Ward said:
pdf said:
When the Mayor was elected, he set targets for increasing patronage of the bus network and reducing private car use - as such buses needed to be given priority on the roads
This is the key message of the paper. The same thing is happening elsewhere in the country too, eg. bus-stop laybys are being removed to prevent cars overtaking buses when they stop, etc.It's quite clear that the message we drivers are meant to receive is "private transport bad, public transport good". Everything possible will be done until we capitulate.
...quite simply, it's confirmed what I already thought - it's time to leave the city.
Peter Ward said:
pdf said:
When the Mayor was elected, he set targets for increasing patronage of the bus network and reducing private car use - as such buses needed to be given priority on the roads
This is the key message of the paper. The same thing is happening elsewhere in the country too, eg. bus-stop laybys are being removed to prevent cars overtaking buses when they stop, etc.It's quite clear that the message we drivers are meant to receive is "private transport bad, public transport good". Everything possible will be done until we capitulate.
As for bus lanes they piss me right off, a bus crawls along every 15-20 minutes and the rest of the time the bus lane is empty- should that lane not be open to cars and made use of to help ease congestion- oops logical thinking, i'd better stop or i'l get done for being a terrorist.
rickeyt said:
If only the same priority was given to the scumbag drug dealers (which are the root cause of most street crime) you might just consider walking instead of driving into town especially at night.
Quite right. I abhor the sheer scale of the money being directed at crap like this when our schools standards are dropping, NHS is in a shambles, junior doctors can't find jobs, crime is going up.When will this government get its priorities straight FFS.
s.E36GUY said:
When will this government get its priorities straight FFS.
It does, in it's opinion.It's just that ITS priorities are woefully different to the PUBLIC's priorities...and this government have long forgotten what their job description is...
Oh...and it's local councils that are doing half of the bus-lane crap (Ken Livingscum in the case of London), not central gov't (but they are encouraging the locals...)
Whilst we are on about congestion. I'm new to PH and I'm sure this has been discussed many times before, so please bear with me. But are traffic lights deliberately phased to make your journey a misery. I live just outside Preston in Lancashire which may be unique in having a "ring road" that goes right through the middle of town - yes really! I got increasingly pissed off with the stop/start instead of flow/go.
I decided to monitor it over a week of driving in and out.I only counted a red or green once I was within fiveish cars of the signal (not from way back down the queue) and the results were 57% against 43% for. Is there a mathmetician or highways engineer in the house to explain why this should be so or do i smell a rat? Also, if the "ring road" is supposed to be the primary route why do signals at every crossing junction seem to give the secondary roads equal duration?
I decided to monitor it over a week of driving in and out.I only counted a red or green once I was within fiveish cars of the signal (not from way back down the queue) and the results were 57% against 43% for. Is there a mathmetician or highways engineer in the house to explain why this should be so or do i smell a rat? Also, if the "ring road" is supposed to be the primary route why do signals at every crossing junction seem to give the secondary roads equal duration?
rickeyt said:
Whilst we are on about congestion. I'm new to PH and I'm sure this has been discussed many times before, so please bear with me. But are traffic lights deliberately phased to make your journey a misery. I live just outside Preston in Lancashire which may be unique in having a "ring road" that goes right through the middle of town - yes really! I got increasingly pissed off with the stop/start instead of flow/go.
I decided to monitor it over a week of driving in and out.I only counted a red or green once I was within fiveish cars of the signal (not from way back down the queue) and the results were 57% against 43% for. Is there a mathmetician or highways engineer in the house to explain why this should be so or do i smell a rat? Also, if the "ring road" is supposed to be the primary route why do signals at every crossing junction seem to give the secondary roads equal duration?
I think you will find that Preston was one of the first places to use traffic lights to actively discourage people from driving into the town through the use of phasing to make it atake a long time. It is probably about 30 years ago that this was implemented on Fishergate. The trouble is that too many others have copied the idea.I decided to monitor it over a week of driving in and out.I only counted a red or green once I was within fiveish cars of the signal (not from way back down the queue) and the results were 57% against 43% for. Is there a mathmetician or highways engineer in the house to explain why this should be so or do i smell a rat? Also, if the "ring road" is supposed to be the primary route why do signals at every crossing junction seem to give the secondary roads equal duration?
rickeyt said:
OK! so congestion is a problem and not helped by inconsiderate ars'oles who think they can do what they want when they want, but does it really warrant such an investment in equipment and other resources. If only the same priority was given to the scumbag drug dealers (which are the root cause of most street crime) you might just consider walking instead of driving into town especially at night. Mr Livingstone can get away with it in London but provincial towns will die if they keep going down this road because people are getting hacked off and, eventually, will stop going into centres all together and stick to out of town retail parks. Expect a law to forcing out of town retail parks to charge extortionate parking fees to appease the town centres stores dying on their feet.
i've been waiting to see that since i've realised how much money is poured into the transport systemNone of this really has congestion at heart it is merely the mechanism to allow mass revenue collection.
So it is cheaper to buy a banger from 'dodgy Dave' without V5, tax or insurance and run the gauntlett of no docs and a charge of no insurance at about a £1k fine for as long as you get away with it before you are actually pulled over by an actual police officer? Masses cheaper than a daily communte into London with risk to licence than it is to run a totally illegal car.. and the government wonders why there are so many uninsured drivers
So it is cheaper to buy a banger from 'dodgy Dave' without V5, tax or insurance and run the gauntlett of no docs and a charge of no insurance at about a £1k fine for as long as you get away with it before you are actually pulled over by an actual police officer? Masses cheaper than a daily communte into London with risk to licence than it is to run a totally illegal car.. and the government wonders why there are so many uninsured drivers
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