Transit lanes in Sydney

[Brendan Terrett]

People in Sydney may have noticed that bus lanes in off peak hours are not very well used by cars. For those who know when the bus lane restrictions don't apply, it can act as a great little express lane to skip past (sometimes extremely heavy) traffic using the general lanes. I think the best example of this is on Victoria Road outside of the relevant AM/PM peaks, and especially during clearway hours (opposite the peak flow) where you're guaranteed a clear run.

Transit Lanes on the other hand have far, FAR less compliance. I've driven on Epping Road, the Gore Hill Freeway and Military Road in peak hour during the past few days, and the Transit Lanes were mostly occupied by single occupant vehicles who were clearly flouting the rules. As to whether they actually knew they were driving in a transit lane, who knows? I think a lot of people have no idea that you're not allowed to drive in these lanes unless you have X number of occupants during the specified times.

This made me think - why not paint transit lanes red? It would kind of reinforce the fact that it's a lane for special vehicles during the time of operation. You'd have the dumb morons who can't/don't read signs sitting where they're supposed to sit in the general traffic lanes because at least they know 'red lane = not allowed', while those who actually can read the signs can use the lane when they fulfill the transit lane occupancy requirements. 

This would be especially useful on Military Road through Mosman and Cremorne. Despite all the flashy renderings about how the B-line which feeds into the city via Military Road will be some sort of transport revolution, the buses will still have to share a T3 Transit Lane with cars through Mosman and Cremorne during peaks, most of which are only single occupant cars.

One thing that I also think could be done for a bit of enforcement is installing cameras in T3 lanes. I noticed a heck of a lot of cars (mainly sports cars) and utes which could clearly only seat two occupants, and would probably show the fact on their registration papers, driving in the T3 lane. They already do a registration lookup with bus lane cameras, so I'd imagine looking up the number of seats that a car has would be a fairly easy thing to implement.

[Squeeowl]

Here in WA they use red asphalt for some, but not all transit lanes. IMO it hasn't helped that much - people ceased to park in them during off peak, meaning parking lines were later painted over them as a reassurance that people could still park in the lanes off peak. Also find that on occasions they don't get used properly off-peak or people get confused as to the lanes activation during AM/PM peak or vice versa.

[davis]

Make 'em bus lanes or git rid of 'em