Brian Rudman: A simple green message - this lane's for buses only

Photo / Dean Purcell

In India, because of widespread illiteracy, political parties are identified by symbols on ballot papers to make it easy for the voters. For the minority of Auckland motorists who can't read the myriad signs indicating bus lanes, perhaps it's time to do the same, and revert to the old practice of painting bus lanes green.

For the repeat offenders, we could go a step further, and sentence them to 100 hours of stencilling bus symbols on the lanes that give them so much strife.

If, after more than 10 years of bus lanes, they're still confused about the rules, then an intimate encounter such as this should provide the remedial teaching experience they need.

No doubt a few will try to cheat the system regardless, but a return to colour coding would at least eliminate the "I didn't know it was a bus lane" excuse.

Auckland City began colouring its bus priority lanes green in 1998 to, in the words of a later council report, "increase the clarity and visibility of bus priority lanes, with the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of the priority measures and promoting the use of passenger transport".

The colouring was dropped in 2004, not because it didn't work, but because transport committee members thought the colour was aesthetically offensive and, in the jargon of the bureaucracy, caused "a reduction in streetscape quality".

Committee chairman Greg McKeown declared, "It is hard to imagine the sort of bus lane markings we currently use on Dominion Rd being regarded as an enhancement to Tamaki Drive." All right for the plebs of Mt Roskill, in other words, but not for the toffs of the eastern suburbs.

Councillors were advised that colouring the lanes had led to "reductions in illegal use of priority lanes" but that the commencement of council enforcement of bus lanes in March 2003 had "significantly reduced illegal usage more significantly".

Cost was also raised as an obstacle, Mr McKeown saying it cost $75,000 to maintain the colour treatment of just over 6km of bus lanes on Dominion Rd. A report said resurfacing was needed every three to four years.

Mr McKeown said the "decreasing need to paint the increasing number of major arterials and CBD streets green" would "improve how they look and lower overall road-marking costs".

Ironically, as Auckland abandoned the standard it had pioneered, the rest of the country started to take it up. It became the de facto Auckland regional standard and Wellington and Hamilton adopted it. In September 2000, Transit endorsed it, saying it planned to adopt the colour throughout the country.

Transit's support came after an investigation of bus lanes practices in Scottish and Australian cities. It said Auckland trials, of which it was a part, brought an immediate cut in the amount of illegal use.

Mr McKeown quoted impressive statistics to back his argument that effective enforcement measures had made the colourisation superfluous. He said the city council had taken over bus lane enforcement from the police in March 2003 and, after just five months, offending had dropped from 6 per cent to 2.5 per cent in the morning rush hours and from 13.2 per cent to 1.9 per cent in the afternoon peak.

Records show that among those caught was veteran protester Penny Bright, who claimed the lanes were a violation of the public's freedom of movement in favour of private bus firms. At least her excuse had a bit of originality, not like the tired old "I didn't see the signs" or "I was just outside the 50m limit, it's not fair" that are still being trotted out more than 10 years after bus lanes appeared.

Bus lane green is not everyone's favourite colour, especially when new. Many of us felt the same about the black bitumen and grey concrete that replaced our cheery red scoria pavements. But life goes on and the mature green strips down Dominion and Sandringham Rds hardly offend the eye these days. You hardly notice them, except to be reminded that unless you can find a sign saying otherwise, they're for buses.

Like the political party symbols in India, they're a simple, universally recognised, identifier - in this case saying loud and clear to drivers to beware - unless they've got $150 to waste.