Editorial: Bus-lane stings may cost votes

Chander says he receives plenty of insults and rude gestures but doesn't take them personally. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Opinion

In the run-up to the October elections for the new Supercity council, there has been - and will be - no claim that our rates are going to fall. New and improved models of anything, even when they're touted as leaner and meaner, never cost less than the one they replace.

That being so, it is not unreasonable for local authorities to seek to generate revenue that will offset the cost of their operations. Councils have a statutory obligation to regulate dog registration, for example, and, quite rightly, they charge fees commensurate with the cost of the work; there is no reason that people who don't have dogs should pay for the regulation of those who do.

But revelations that the Auckland City Council had a target to boost revenue from parking and bus-lane fines by $12 million in the three years to June take the idea of revenue generation a good deal too far. To meet the budgeted increase, 30 more traffic and parking wardens were hired - an increase of 50 per cent - and instructed to exercise their powers more diligently.

Mark Donnelly, an independent councillor who voted against the measures and this week described them as "a straight-out money grab", said wardens were "out in suburban streets in the early hours of the morning, issuing warrant-of-fitness tickets".

Irritating though it is to get a parking ticket, it is a stretch to try and characterise it as the exercise of unbridled power: the parker knows - or ought to know - the rules at the time of parking. The ability to assess the passage of an hour or two is all that's required to stay out of trouble. Likewise no one wants cars on the road that have not been subjected to a roadworthiness check.

But the assiduousness with which the wardens have policed the use by private cars of the bus-only lanes has plainly exceeded both good sense and the needs of sensible traffic management. In the year to last June, motorists have been stung $4.2 million for using bus lanes - $2.5 million of that for using Grafton Bridge, which is a designated bus lane from 7am to 7pm on weekdays.

As a return on investment, the latter operation is a particular success: one bloke and a stationary video camera, operating a maximum of 60 hours a week (in practice, much less) is earning the council $800 an hour. But the enforcement has, quite rightly, angered motorists because of the unfairness of the rule and the unimaginative nitpicking mentality with which it has been enforced.

The law forbids entering a bus lane for the purposes of turning left at the next street until a driver is 50m from the corner.

Quite apart from the fact that it is extremely difficult in the sensory overload of rush-hour traffic to estimate 50m precisely - a spatial design expert was 14 per cent out - the rule, if rigidly enforced, creates Alice-in-Wonderland situations: a car exiting from a car park must cross the bus lane to join a thick queue of traffic for, say, five metres before swinging left into the bus lane again - or the driver risks a $150 fine.

Bus lanes are an excellent traffic management tool which express council's commendable determination to improve traffic flow and incentivise public transport use. But when motorists see such pig-headed enforcement they may be forgiven for thinking the system is more intent on fleecing them than keeping traffic moving.

They may also be expected to bear the matter in mind when the voting papers arrive in the mail in October.

Mayor John Banks was part of the group who voted the changes in back in 2007.

His transport committee chairman Ken Baguley has said that the parking division was instructed to act "in the most efficient, fair and even manner" to generate new revenue.

Neither having dissociated himself from the enforcement policy, it will be up to voters to decide whether they have been efficient, fair and even. In this case, we think not.