Mobile camera enforcement vehicle
Discussion
I was driving around Hackney in London last weekend and notice a smart car with camera enforcement vehicle written all over it and two visable cameras mounted to it. Has anyone else noticed these? It’s a joke or some silly scheme…surely?
Haven’t things gone a little too far when you have to employ people to drive around in a fricking smart car filming in case anyone goes into a bus lane (god forbid)?
Haven’t things gone a little too far when you have to employ people to drive around in a fricking smart car filming in case anyone goes into a bus lane (god forbid)?
They will be in Reading soon too. You may have seen the signs saying that as of September Reading council will be responsible for patrolling the buslanes, and not the police.
There are many junctions in Reading which are delibrately closed to all traffic except busses.
Oh, and while we are at it... beware the scamera van on the Henley Road between Donkin Hill and Caversham, on the A4 near Woodley, A4 between Reading and jc12, A329 Wokingham Road, A329 London Road and also on Vastern Road (behind the station).
There are many junctions in Reading which are delibrately closed to all traffic except busses.
Oh, and while we are at it... beware the scamera van on the Henley Road between Donkin Hill and Caversham, on the A4 near Woodley, A4 between Reading and jc12, A329 Wokingham Road, A329 London Road and also on Vastern Road (behind the station).
puggit said:
They will be in Reading soon too. You may have seen the signs saying that as of September Reading council will be responsible for patrolling the buslanes, and not the police.
There are many junctions in Reading which are delibrately closed to all traffic except busses.
Oh, and while we are at it... beware the scamera van on the Henley Road between Donkin Hill and Caversham, on the A4 near Woodley, A4 between Reading and jc12, A329 Wokingham Road, A329 London Road and also on Vastern Road (behind the station).
There are many junctions in Reading which are delibrately closed to all traffic except busses.
Oh, and while we are at it... beware the scamera van on the Henley Road between Donkin Hill and Caversham, on the A4 near Woodley, A4 between Reading and jc12, A329 Wokingham Road, A329 London Road and also on Vastern Road (behind the station).
You're really selling this Reading experience
Thanks for the heads-up.
james_j said:
Bloody sad way to earn a living isn't it! ...and to think it's our money being squandered...
I'd imagine with all the infractions that go on, they probably pay for themselves in fines! It's a pitty really. If it wasn't for the fools that willfully (mis)using the bus lanes, etc., and creating a requirement for "enforcement", the rest of us wouldn't be in such danger of getting busted for taking a wrong turn (at a no left turn, for example).
Andrew D said:
It's a pitty really. If it wasn't for the fools that willfully (mis)using the bus lanes,...
But don't the theiving little scumbags set up cameras right at the ends where, for example, many right thinking drivers might steal the last 5 yards of a bus lane so they can turn left easier to cause less of a tailback on the road that now has 50% of its former capacity? And people trying to filter into traffic by clipping the very end of the bus lane as they emerge from a junction?
Seems to be that the imbeciles behind these traffic creation schemes love using bus lanes to force unnatural manouvres around junctions, then stick in cameras to reap their rewards from hapless drivers simply trying to make the best of the bad situation.
SM
supermono said:
But don't the theiving little scumbags set up cameras right at the ends where, for example, many right thinking drivers might steal the last 5 yards of a bus lane so they can turn left easier to cause less of a tailback on the road that now has 50% of its former capacity?
Well if you're planning on only using the last five yards, you'll be able to see the camera and so you won't do it. There's a fairly extensive bus lane system on my route to work, and it's (comparatively) regularly policed. I've never seen the plod pull anyone for cutting across the last five to ten yards, which almost every driver does. Conversely there are a lot of cars that drive down the whole thing (past about 400yds of queue), and they always get pulled. But I suppose that's why TrafPol are great and cameras are poor.
The problem is that a nearside bus lane is intrinsically a stupid idea. In urban systems almost all of the merge or diverges are on the nearside, which means almost every vehicle on the road will have to cross (and thus obstruct) the bus lane at some point. Separate guided-bus carriageways in the central reserve are far more effective, but obviously cost more so councils don't like them! It seems to me that the idea of a nearside bus lane is not to make the bus service any more effecive, but rather to just p*ss car drivers off so they'll start using (god awful) public transport.
[quote=Andrew It seems to me that the idea of a nearside bus lane is not to make the bus service any more effecive, but rather to just p*ss car drivers off so they'll start using (god awful) public transport.[/quote]
hmm, so using your logic instead of having a large metal vehicle (packed with safety features) just crossing a bus lane, you'd rather hoards of pedestrians try to cross a lane of traffic toget to the centre of the road to catch a bus.......hmm, just crazy enough to catch on!
hmm, so using your logic instead of having a large metal vehicle (packed with safety features) just crossing a bus lane, you'd rather hoards of pedestrians try to cross a lane of traffic toget to the centre of the road to catch a bus.......hmm, just crazy enough to catch on!
eccles said:
hmm, so using your logic instead of having a large metal vehicle (packed with safety features) just crossing a bus lane, you'd rather hoards of pedestrians try to cross a lane of traffic toget to the centre of the road to catch a bus.......hmm, just crazy enough to catch on!
I never said anything about pedestrians. In practice schemes with a guided path along the central reserve have footbridges or underpasses to provide access (akin to most modern tramways). I suppose if you were trying to cut costs you could provide a light-controlled pedestrian crossing and still cause less disruption to car traffic than a nearside bus lane.
The premise of a "high quality bus" system is to provide rapid transit for suburb dwellers to the city centre. The guided sections should be used as a method of bypassing traffic on the heavily conjested arterial roads into the city centre, so they really shouldn't have many stops.
james_j said:
polus said:
Haven’t things gone a little too far when you have to employ people to drive around in a fricking smart car filming in case anyone goes into a bus lane (god forbid)?
Bloody sad way to earn a living isn't it! ...and to think it's our money being squandered...
Shame these people aren't treated like the scum that they are, I recall reading an article a few years ago about some US state (Hawaii IIRC) trying to introduce Scameras and the public backlash against the operators (chucking 'waste' at them etc) was so great that they dropped the idea as no-one would do the job.
eccles said:
silly me!... i was just thinking of how the passengers actually got on the buses!
You assumed that in my original post I hadn't considered how passengers reach the stops, but in fact I simply hadn't mentioned it. eccles said:
from what i can gather bus stops usually work better when the passengers don't have to cross lines of traffic to get on, but hey ho, you've just added bridges and underpasses to cross one lane of road!
I haven't added them, they exist already. For instance at the newly constructed guided bus scheme on the A641 Manchester Road in Bradford. And it would be a rare road indeed that has a central reserve (and is thus a dual carriageway) yet only has one lane of traffic in either direction. It was my understanding that the smallest capacity standard dual-carriageway cross section was "D2AP", which stands for "Dual, Two-Lane, All Purpose".
But if such a single-lane dual carriageway did exist, I'm sure a traffic-signal controlled crossing (as I mentioned in my post but you neatly brushed-over in your response) would be appropriate.
Andrew D said:
eccles said:
silly me!... i was just thinking of how the passengers actually got on the buses!
You assumed that in my original post I hadn't considered how passengers reach the stops, but in fact I simply hadn't mentioned it. please forgive me for judging your post on what you mentioned, and not on what you didn't mention.
Edited by eccles on Friday 25th August 12:28
eccles said:
please forgive me for judging your post on what you mentioned, and not on what you didn't mention.
I'm happy for you to judge what I write. Unfortunately you didn't limit your observations just what I had written, as you now claim to have done. My statement was;
Andrew D said:
In urban systems almost all of the merge or diverges are on the nearside, which means almost every vehicle on the road will have to cross (and thus obstruct) the bus lane at some point. Separate guided-bus carriageways in the central reserve are far more effective, but obviously cost more so councils don't like them!
To which you responded; eccles said:
so using your logic instead of having a large metal vehicle (packed with safety features) just crossing a bus lane, you'd rather hoards of pedestrians try to cross a lane of traffic toget to the centre of the road to catch a bus
I made no mention of whether or not I considered it preferable for passengers to cross the carriageway. Yet you stated that I would favour it, which is not the case. I'm not bothered about people disagreeing with what I write. But I do have a problem with people inventing opinions and attributing them to me.
Gassing Station | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff