Ealing's bus lanes under scrutiny

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Council watchdog seeks views from borough's motorists

Residents are being encouraged to have their say on the borough’s bus lanes by Ealing Council’s watchdog panel on environment and transport issues.

The panel is inviting residents to nominate which bus lanes they think are working well or those that are problematic. Councillors will be considering a range of issues around bus lanes, such as journey times, congestion and reliability of service, at a meeting in January and the views of residents will inform these discussions.

Panel chairman Councillor Ann Chapman said “Bus lanes are always a hot topic of discussion so I hope residents will take this opportunity to inform the panel’s investigations into their role and effectiveness.

“We’re interested in people’s views on whether changes to how bus lanes operate would make them work better for all road users, for example, there may be a case for changing times that a bus lane is in force, or there might be concerns about the position of a bus lane, its length or the road layout at junctions.

“Any resident can contact the panel in the coming weeks to nominate areas they would like the panel’s work to focus on. Whilst we do not have the power to change the existing bus lanes, the work of the panel is still very important as we will use the information we gather to make recommendations to council.”

The move comes soon after the introduction of online evidence of bus lane contraventions.  Motorists who feel they have been unfairly penalised for illegally driving in a bus lane can now check the evidence for themselves on the internet. 

From now on anyone who receives a ticket for breaking bus lane regulations will be given a unique PIN number so that they can log on to Ealing Council’s website and look at the images caught on camera.  

The service will soon be extended to cover all other moving traffic offences that are captured on CCTV and will include illegal turns, U-turns and ignored no-entry signs.

December 5, 2006