8,000 road rule breaches detected during Cork City bus camera pilot
The bus-mounted camera trial in Cork was run on the 24-hour 220 route, carried out separately to a national plan for the introduction of safety cameras.
Bus-mounted road safety cameras captured thousands of motorists flouting the rules of the road during a successful trial project in Cork City.
Some 8,000 separate infringement incidents were spotted by the cameras — from motorists driving illegally in dedicated bus lanes, to impeding the flow of buses by parking on double-yellow lines, or stopping in yellow box junctions — but there will be no enforcement proceedings arising because it was just a trial.
The trial was run by the National Transport Authority (NTA) and Bus Éireann on two buses on Cork’s busy 24-hour 220 route across several weeks between August and November last year.
The authority said it was designed to establish the capabilities of a bus-mounted camera system for enforcement purposes and, to get a more “informed indication” of the scale of traffic offences impacting the city’s bus service, which has faced constant criticism about punctuality and reliability.
“Having completed the trial, we are satisfied that such a bus-based camera system would be beneficial in addressing current infringement issues which were detected during the trial,” the authority said.
“However, the NTA does not have any powers of prosecution in this area and, currently, only the gardaí could utilise the bus camera images for the issuance of fines and prosecutions.”
The detail emerged in response to a question from Labour councillor Peter Horgan, the chair of the city council’s transport committee, who sought an update on the rollout of automatic enforcement cameras at junctions across the city.
The authority's interim chief executive, Hugh Creegan, explained how the bus-mounted camera trial in Cork was run separately to a national plan for the introduction of safety cameras.
Under Irish law, An Garda Síochána is the only entity that can use camera images for traffic enforcement purposes. However, there is a provision in legislation permitting another agency to provide — under a specific agreement — camera images to the gardaí for them to subsequently process and enforce.
This process was put in place a few years ago for a pilot camera enforcement project at one junction in Dublin.
Mr Creegan said setting up a system that can provide enforcement at a small number of junctions on “an ad hoc basis” does not provide a “scalable, expandable system", and so it was decided that a more comprehensive overall strategy and approach was required.
The Department of Transport directed Transport Infrastructure Ireland to prepare that national strategy, with a draft strategy due for publication in the coming months.
It is understood that the strategy will focus first on detecting speeding, red light and bus lane abuse first, but that the system will be designed to identify other violations later — such as using a mobile phone while driving and not wearing a seat belt — with law changes required.
Mr Creegan said that, pending this strategy, the authority plans to use certain powers under Section 81(7) of the Road Traffic Act 2010. It also plans to work with gardaí and Dublin City Council on the deployment of traffic enforcement cameras in the capital.
“Procurement exercises will be required for both cameras and a system operator, with the intention that one or two locations will be operational this year as part of an interim arrangement,” he said.
“However, given that this is a very limited interim arrangement, it is not currently planned to expand the initial deployment to other cities."
