End of the road for Fishergate bus lanes

The controversial scheme to uncork the city centre’s tightest traffic bottleneck, will be shelved in the next couple of weeks in the face of mounting criticism from motorists.

County Hall chiefs say the experimental measures, initially brought in for a trial period of up to six months, have been a success, with the traffic flow in Fishergate much improved over the festive shopping period compared to previous years.

But hundreds of drivers caught on camera and fined up to £60 will have only two words to say after the departure of the contentious congestion controls - good riddance!

The bus/taxi lanes were only brought in on an experimental basis on October 31. The plan was to see how they helped speed up traffic flow by removing vehicles between the hours of 11am and 6pm, seven days a week.

For the first two weeks drivers caught contravening the rules were sent warning letters. But by mid-November the letters turned to fine notices, with around 8,000 being dished out in the first week alone. One motorist caught out by staged a protest with placards warning other drivers.

Coun John Fillis, LCC’s cabinet member for highways and transportation, explained: “For the first time in several years we haven’t had any complaints about motorists not being able to get out of car parks in the city centre due to congestion. So actually it worked.

“All it was set up for was to deal with the car park problems. We had one bank holiday in August when all the cars were trapped on St George’s.

“It will now be lifted and we can then sit down and have a proper look at it, to decide if it is worth maintaining or do we just introduce it in November and December.”