The Evening Express reports that Aberdeen City Council has put forward plans to take over the enforcement of Aberdeen's bus lanes. Currently there are only eight bus-lane cameras in the city, but if this plan was to proceed the number could be increased.

Of course many road users will see this as a money-making scheme by the council, in a similar way to huge growth in the number of speed cameras.


2+, or "car pool lanes", like this in Los Angeles make better use of road space and provide a real incentive for car sharing.

The problem is that the majority of road users do not believe the bus lanes work in the wider interest of the travelling public.

Many of Aberdeen's bus lanes have clearly been introduced in the full knowledge that they will create traffic congestion. With a very few exceptions, the bus lanes in the city have have been created by stealing capacity from existing roads.

In these cases, after the bus lanes were installed 99% of the traffic that used to spread across the full road width, is squeezed into the remaining lanes. In other words if there were two lanes historically, the creation of a bus lane has reduced the road capacity by 50%.

Ponder on that? A 50% reduction in capacity!

No wonder we have severe rush hour traffic congestion in Aberdeen.

Sit in any traffic jam alongside a bus lane and you pretty soon realise that you are sitting there:

• wasting valuable time
• wasting fuel
• increasing the localised pollution
• and increasing your blood pressure

for little reason.

You'll be lucky if you see more than a couple of buses and taxis in the time you and your compatriots are drumming the steering wheel in frustration. (And we all know that frustration leads to rash driving, speeding and accidents.)

I simply don't believe we can justify 'sanitising' so much precious road space for commercial bus companies and taxi firms to use to ply their trade.

In a number of parts of Britain they have a much more sensible, equitable policy.

Any vehicle that has two or more people (whether car, truck or bus) can use the 2+ lanes (as the bus lanes are named). In the USA they are called "car pool lanes".

What are the benefits of 2+ lanes?

• They spread the traffic load over the available road space much better.
• They thereby free up the traffic - and in Leeds they report that they free up the traffic across all lanes (including the bus/2+ lane).
• They result in greater public acceptance and less infringements.
• They act as a very real and positive incentive for car sharing.
• They are good for the environment*.

(*less localised pollution from standing traffic, reduced fuel wastage, car sharing encouraged - and a car with passengers is usually less polluting per head than buses.)

So what is the downside?

None that I can see.

If the buses move as freely, traffic flows better and people are happier about them then it surely has to be a win-win situation.

In desperation to attack the idea, people have pointed out that there have been a few cases of people in the USA travelling with a dummy in the passenger seat in order to use the car pool lanes. Ha, ha! Very funny... but is that the best excuse you can think of not to implement this sensible reclaiming of precious road capacity?

Oh and the other one, courtesy of the officials at St Nicholas House, was that traffic in the 2+ lanes might get held up behind buses at bus stops. Ummmm, isn't that something that happens frequently anyway? Hardly a specific 2+ lane problem I would have thought!

Come on Aberdeen councillors! Let's throw out the tired, blinkered and environmentally-flawed anti-car political dogma.

Change our bus lanes to 2+ lanes and let's get Aberdeen moving again! The cost would be minimal and the benefits huge.