Bus gets fined for using the bus lane. (Reading Post 29/12/2011)

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

From the Reading Post:

Bosses at Reading Transport could not believe their eyes when they received a fine for one of their buses driving in a bus lane.

An over-enthusiastic employee at Reading Borough Council posted out the ^60 fine after the No 9 bus was snapped in Minster Street.

Reading Buses office staff were said to be ^highly amused^ by the penalty charge notice, which the council said was the result of human error.

The council hopes to rake in ^1,395,000 in bus lane fines by the end of the financial year, but Reading Buses chief executive James Freeman was not expecting to have to contribute.

He said: ^I don^t think it^s ever happened to us before so it was a bit of a surprise. It^s clearly our bus and it goes through there all the time.^

A picture accompanying the penalty shows the No 9 bus, which serves Shinfield Park, travelling along Minster Street early on a November morning.

Mr Freeman said: ^Since the bus is a No 9 it^s not as if it^s appeared from nowhere, it^s been in our fleet since 2005 so it must have been through our bus gate thousands of times and certainly seven or eight times a day since April 18.^

Changes to the town centre road network were introduced in April and thousands of motorist were caught out by new restrictions.

The change in the times cars could drive down Minster Street resulted in thousands of drivers inadvertently clocking up hundreds of pounds in fines.

Cameras with the technology to read car registrations snap vehicles driving along Minster Street and fines are automatically sent out to offending motorists unless their registration is on an exemption list, which would normally include buses.

Oscar Mortali, spokesman for the council, which owns Reading Buses, said: ^We are, of course, not in the business of issuing fines to buses driving in bus lanes.

^This was human error which occurred during the testing of the exemption list for fines. It was immediately cancelled.^

A council report in November showed the authority collected income from 2,282 fines for bus lane offences in April, shooting up to to 8,289 in May and going up to 11,930 in September.

 

[Timmer]

The council hopes to rake in ^1,395,000 in bus lane fines by the end of the financial year

So that's the reason councils turn parts of the road network into bus lanes for revenue collecting purposes. There was me thinking it was to speed up buses through 'congested' areas which probably weren't as congested before the bus lanes came along but they are now. And no I am not Jeremy Clarkson.

[JayMac]

And no I am not Jeremy Clarkson.

I say you are and I claim my ^5. 

But to be serious for a moment, it does seem a little duplicitous when a local authority actually forecasts how much revenue they will raise in fines after a public transport project is up and running. Was this ^1.4 million really part of the cost/benefit analysis?

[Tim]

The council hopes to rake in ^1,395,000 in bus lane fines by the end of the financial year

So that's the reason councils turn parts of the road network into bus lanes for revenue collecting purposes.

I'd be all for that.  The more optional taxes on the stupid and lazy, the less there is for the sensible and the honest to pay.