I’d love to keep this anonymous in case any of my fellow villagers are on here, but I’ve started a bit of a stooshie on my village FB page when I tried to make a joke about the village ‘bus gate’ which is notorious for the number of people that have been caught and fined by it.

The purpose of the bus gate is to stop the access roads to some residential developments becoming rat runs, whilst still allowing buses to avoid the congestion in the village centre. So far, so commendable.

The ‘gate’ comprises a narrowing in the road, with lots of signage including a circular blue sign saying buses, bikes and taxis only, a smaller red sign saying something about a camera, but confusingly in front of all these, a larger sign indicating that you have priority over oncoming traffic (obviously at the opposite end it says oncoming traffic has priority.

Anyway, this bus gate has now raised £500,000 in fines, which at £30 a fine is 17,000 drivers approx.

My suggestion that there is something fundamentally flawed with the bus gate is shouted down by people saying there are plenty of signs, it’s perfectly obvious, people just need to read the signs etc. But I still think that 17,000 people failing to read the signs suggests that the signage is inadequate.

Predictably, when we first visited the village, our sat nav led us right to the the bus gate, and we sat there reading all the signs and looking at the single lane in front of us. In the end, the sat nav and the ‘priority over oncoming traffic’ led us to think we would be OK (it was a Sunday also) and hey presto, £30 fine on the doormat.

There must be some school of road design which tells you how to sign unfamiliar and unusual road layouts? I would have thought the council could have used some of that £500,000 to design a better system but apparently not…

The ones in Manchester have come under stick, and a friend managed to get the fine cancelled due to poor signs.

My son got caught out in Warrington at around 6am on a Sunday, but they got him twice. Realised he’d entered the bus zone, he turned round and the camera’s zapped him again. Double fine. I told him to write to have it reduced to one but he didn’t bother.

pics? google maps link?

initial thoughts are that the road layout/signage misnt ‘intuitive’ and could do to be looked at. i mean, there cant be 17,000 selfish entitled idiots on the r…oh, wait.

PENALTY NOTICE

Trying to win an argument on a village Facebook group:

Fine: £30

But yes, you are right, you need pretty blatant signage to overcome blind faith in SatNavs.

Surely the priority sign is for the buses which are allowed to enter that way as they have priority over oncoming traffic leaving the area that way??

Surely the priority sign is for the buses which are allowed to enter that way??

Yes, but they are bigger and more prominent than the signs which say ‘buses only’.

The thing is, despite having been fined myself, I’m not actually trying to argue the signage isn’t clear, in the cold hard light of hindsight, you look at the sign and think, yep, that’s a bus gate.

But when you see it first time, and your Sat Nav is trying to tell you to go through it, your brain can perform some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to convince you it’s OK. This is the aspect which I think needs addressed, the phrase ‘un-intuitive’ above hits the nail on the head I think.

The blue sign says it all really. If your not a bus bike or taxi you’ll get a fine. Satnavs should update pretty soon, all the bus, bike taxi lanes/routes come up as such on mine in Cardiff.

Saw bus lane sign and chose to ignore it because satnav.

I can see where you’re coming from but at the same time I think my own reasoning if confronted with the same situation would be “the buses and taxis only sign takes precedence over whatever I think other signs are telling me”. Sounds like the size of the bus & taxi only sign could be made bigger but there’s probably set sizes for each type and they’ve used those rather than get custom ones made?

Edit: Just saw the photos is the first photo the first time the warning signs appear? If so that’s odd/shit that it’s after the junction

Apparently every smart motorway camera is (at current rates) going to generate £600k of fines next year. Inadequate signage? Or people just dumb? (or think the signs don’t apply to them as they are special 😂)

(although looking at the pics it would make sense to swap the signs around so the bus/taxi/bikes only sign came first)

The rumour is that when it was a new development, the developers put up signs urging people to take a route avoiding the bus gate, but a local councillor came round and took them all down as the developers didn’t have permission to put them up in the first place…

Does look shit.  But the blue signs and narrowing of the road shoykd give it away, and once you’ve had a ticket you’d tell all your mates and if they chose to ignore it…..

re inadequate signs – I very nearly got into big deal of trouble by driving past a police car parked down on the Cowgate during the curfew. They let me off by me claiming to be from way out of town (kind of true, but I had lived there for 20 years)

They never really enquired how I had arrived into the curfew area – I hadn’t actually passed any curfew signs, just driven onto the Cowgate from a almost never used side street in order to get to the hotel car park.

Looks less obvious than the one I drove through completely oblivious:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.0307931,-3.0621996,3a,75y,243.75h,90.13t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1syQpfXhyEjRoWL4bUZpKInA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Made me realize how I thought I knew the road, and there really wasn’t looking at the signs

A bus gate to me is one where there’s a metal barrier wide enough for a bus, and with a partial speed hump and big hold in the middle that a bus (or delivery lorry, dunno about ambulance) can clear, but a car can’t. And the barriers stop you moving to one side to cheat.  Bike lane either side of the barriers too.

Or just has remote controlled bollards.

Only one of those I’ve seen is very well signed. Ignore the signs and you rip the front skirt of the car off, and/or the engine sump guard, and more.

edit: doesn’t have the opportunity to be self funding via fines though, so I can imagine UK wanting to go the technological route, rather than mechanical 😉

It’s a losing argument, I know, I just feel that if so many people are getting fined, then there’s something not right. Even if it means that the signage and gate design HAS to assume people won’t read/won’t understand the signs, then it should be upon the designers to take that into account.

I got fined, and I’m not stupid! I stopped and read the signs, didn’t know how else to get where I was going, got flustered, assumed the blue bus signage was Monday to Friday only etc. and figured if I drove AROUND the funny green box painted on the road, then I would be OK.

getting flustered & ignoring road signs would fail you a driving test. Time for some refresher lessons? 😃 Or learn to use your sat-nav properly so it can re-route you ignoring the bus route?

getting flustered & ignoring road signs would fail you a driving test. Time for some refresher lessons?

Can’t really argue with that, although I’d bet any other form of signage is clearer or is taught in the highway code, show me where bus gates are discussed in theory tests or highway code?

so it can re-route you ignoring the bus route?

So the default setting for your sat nav is that you are a bus? 😉

It seems pretty clear to me. There’s a sign. It’s painted on the road. What more do you want?

PENALTY NOTICE

Trying to win an argument on a village Facebook group:

Fine: £30

I missed this, LOL!

The first thing I would be asking myself is who gets the money from these fines. If it is the people that are responsible for deciding whether the signs need to be changed, then they may not want to change them. That’s serious money coming in.

Maybe needs a variation on this?

What more do you want?

Nothing, I’ve already admitted that the signage is perfectly clear, I just think though that if so many people are getting caught and fined, that there’s something not right.

Maybe it should be a different argument altogether, maybe I should be arguing that if they can afford to erect a camera and fine people for driving through a bus gate, why the hell can’t they prosecute people committing crimes that actually matter, e.g. hurtling through the village at 40mph when it’s a 20mph zone. It just seems disproportionate that a village bus gate can generate so much money in fines…

I’d need to see what – if any – signage was before that signage. Coming up to that junction from either direction I would expect something like a big painted arrow and ALL VEHS or something similar on the road itself, along with an arrow sign. The proximity of that signage, plus the height it is at, to the junction makes it all but invisible if you’re intending on turning left, if that makes sense?

The first thing I would be asking myself is who gets the money from these fines. If it is the people that are responsible for deciding whether the signs need to be changed, then they may not want to change them. That’s serious money coming in.

and my argument is that if these people (Edinburgh City Council) actually wanted to stop people driving through the bus gate, they would consider 17,000 people having driven through it to be a dismal failure!

Further back there is more blue signange saying ‘restricted road’.

I honestly can’t remember if there is any signage saying ‘no through route’.

I think the biggest benefit would be for people who don’t know the village and are looking for address ‘X’. There really needs to be a sign saying ‘No Access to streets X,Y,Z’ or even a basic sign showing the alternate route.

From both directions you are ‘funneled’ into the bus gate so that by the time you reach the heavy duty signage you either go through or have to pull a three point turn, I think this is what I meant when I said I got ‘flustered’ up above, basically I always feel that if you’re pulling a three point turn on a double lane road then you have done something wrong…

Edit: ‘Funneled’ is misleading, but you do end up having to pull a three point turn if you’ve got that far, there’s no other obvious route.

That does look like needless over signage to me. Particularly with the additional bike lane signs to the side. There was a similar situation in Newbury years ago when a bridge changed to being just a bus lane.
Personally I would think that a no entry, except for busses, taxis & cycles sign would be much more straightforward.

Personally I would think that a no entry, except for busses, taxis & cycles sign would be much more straightforward.

Yep, and red signage instead of blue. For some reason I don’t associate blue signage with ‘thou shalt not!!!’ it’s more ‘here’s some useful info’.

Anyway, I’ve comprehensively lost the argument on the village page, which makes a second time I’ve made an ass of myself on there, shouldn’t have posted complaining about cat shit on my lawn the first time…

I think the signage is not very clear for these type of unusual road layouts.

If the priority is to prevent unauthorised vehicles from proceeding through, then there should be a red circle ‘no motor vehicles’ sign uppermost; the one with the motorbike jumping over a car. Underneath that, there could be the blue ‘bike, taxi & bus only’ sign.

I think the red circle sign has clearer meaning that you must not go through & is easier to pick out in unfamiliar surroundings.

Would have assumed that there should be a red circle sign saying no vehicles?

And I’d have probably also re-done the paint on the road, such that the actual real road carries on round, and the bus bit has the T-junction. Specially if the bus has gotta give-way to move off from the bus stops.

a circular blue sign saying buses, bikes and taxis only,

This is, I think, the confusion. A sign prohibiting you from doing something should be in a red circle, like the no cycling sign. Blue signs give instructions so, logically speaking, that sign says buses, bikes and taxis only should use the gate and nothing about other what other vehicles should do.

But signage like that has existed since at least the eighties and most people can work out the intent.

Should have a proper no entry sign with an additional ‘except buses’. It’s not as if bus drivers won’t know their route.

Like this one near me.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.9096106,-1.9878943,3a,75y,118.28h,82.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svcI6YfXovkeNvB6nKpZx1w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Seems reasonably obvious but could do with one of these to make it clear

I’m sympathetic to this issue. I’d never heard of a ‘bus gate’ until one popped up near work about six months ago. My one is fairly self explanatory being a side road off a main road, but the example above looks like a trap for any driver who’s never driven on that road before. I bet if you set up a blind test where you sent 100 drivers down that road without briefing them at least half would end up with a £30 fine.

It’s all very well saying that they sho you do have known better, but you’ve got to legislate for the lowest common denominator.

Some big red no entry ⛔️(Except busses) would work fine and is available as an option for the road designers, I’ve seen it used lots.

Signage should be clear, or the risk of being accused of deliberate revenue generation is great.

This is, I think, the confusion. A sign prohibiting you from doing something should be in a red circle, like the no cycling sign. Blue signs give instructions so, logically speaking, that sign says buses, bikes and taxis only should use the gate and nothing about other what other vehicles should do.

That’s getting close to explaining what was going on in my head, I saw the blue ‘bus only’ sign and associated it with the blue bus signs elsewhere in the city, except they are accompanied with a list of times when it is OK to use the bus lane and when it isn’t. So I don’t associated these signs with being forbidden from doing anything.

Combine this with the other sign telling me that I have priority over the traffic coming towards me, which I sort of extrapolate as meaning ‘you have permission to be here, BUT, oncoming traffic has priority’ etc.

I dispute that anything is ‘obvious’ or that it is ‘stupid’ to have driven through the bus gate, I just can’t explain why that is the case, other than ‘I did, therefore it can’t be stupid’ lol

I have to agree that the ‘no entry except buses’ sign from Martinhutch is more intuitive.

I wouldnt like to guarentee I wouldnt have made the same mistake, being particularly fond of using the bus lanes out of hours in Edinburgh.

Does it not say “buses only” in letters 2m high on the road itself? That would seem pretty unambiguous to me.

Regardless, the question here isn’t whether it’s “clear,” your / our opinions are irrelevant, rather it matters whether it’s legal. Required road signage is very explicitly defined (I’d look it up if I cared sufficiently, Google is thataway ➡ ) and your signs there either meet the legal requirements or they don’t. If they don’t then the fines are unenforceable, if they do then sucks to be you.

Seems reasonably obvious but could do with one of these to make it clear

Except that technically, a round sign with a red border means “no…[whatever’s inside, cars in this case]” – a sign with a red line through it means “end of” whatever the restriction was. So that sign would mean cars allowed. Not really that clear is it?

Seems reasonably obvious but could do with one of these to make it clear

That’s not a legitimate UK road sign to my knowledge.