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Box junction crackdown By David Williams Motoring Editor |
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Motorists who cause gridlock by obstructing yellow box junctions face being
caught by a growing network of CCTV
cameras. Thousands of drivers have already been fined up to £100 for blocking
junctions in a trial launched last year.
Today the Association of London Government
will recommend in a major report that the scheme is expanded. The report is expected
to show that the trial carried out by Transport for London and six local authorities
- Camden, Ealing, Croydon , Newham, Hammersmith and Fulham and Wandsworth - has
had a significant impact in keeping London's congested roads moving. Motorists
caught driving on to yellow box junctions within the trial area before their exit
routes are clear have been liable for a fine. And the threat of a penalty has
had a salutary effect: # TfL is understood to have found that junction-blocking
offences have dropped by about a quarter at some 25 sites since monitoring began.
# Local authorities are said to be reporting similar results at a smaller number
of junctions. # The scheme has significantly cut congestion at hotspots across
the capital. Expanding the scheme across London will result in hundreds more junctions
being monitored by CCTV
cameras. Motoring organisations support the proposals, saying the scheme has
already improved traffic flow, particularly as the identity of most junctions
being monitored has never been officially released. Edmund King, of the RAC Foundation,
said: "Rolling this out across London will be a good move, as long as the councils
show some flexibility in enforcement. "There are examples where motorists have
to move into a box to let an emergency vehicle past, or even instances where yellow
box markings are badly faded. The councils must ensure that enforcement in these
cases is fair." The yellow-box monitoring scheme has not been without its teething
problems. Embarrassingly for TfL, it initially found that one in 10 of the offenders
it was catching were its own bus drivers. In the early days of the scheme, at
least two TfL buses were caught blocking a junction every hour and more than 200
fines had to be issued to bus companies. But within a few weeks, buses were responsible
for only 0.03 offences - a drop of 84 per cent. from this This
Is London |
