Whereas the normal punter in the city of Edinburgh when seeing the placement of bus lane cameras thought it was a cock-up within seconds, unfortunately it took the city council to have an investigation to to find out that their highly paid officials in the transport department, who came up with the plan to ticket motorists for turning into the streets where they live, workmen for turning into the same streets to carry out their business and employees turning into their place of employment are bordering on incompetent.
Whilst it is nice to finally find out that new transport supremo Lesley ‘Prada’ Hinds has gotten to the bottom of the farce, there is no news about what the innocent people who have been landed with enforcement charge notices have to do to have the cock-ups written off and whether any expenses incurred by innocent people will be reimbursed.
According to The Scotsman this morning:
Two of the five camera sites used to date, on Willowbrae Road, are also to be scrapped completely after the council admitted it was a mistake for them to be site there. Many residents were being fined for driving to and from their homes.
The one thing that is different on the bus lane tickets sent which differs from parking tickets (as one can see below) is if you believe you are innocent and appeal, by appealing you accept that the charge is £60 and are no longer entitled to the 14 days grace period for a reduced rate to £30. Our opinion is that this is a device to scare people into not appealing. One wonders whether the council will look at this as in parking fines the grace period is suspended until a decision is made whether the motorist is guilty/innocent.
Losing some rights when appealing... Careful...
We’ve put some questions into the wonderful transport lady in the council press office and will update this post when we get her email.
UPDATE
Obviously the wonderful transport lady is obviously too busy to get back to ‘lil ‘ol us with answers to our questions, but the Evening Chip Paper is following up on the story;
Councillor Hinds said: “I’ve instructed the officials to take the two cameras down in Willowbrae because it’s very clear that the system isn’t working there. We believe the best way to deal with this is to decommission them.”
Still no word of whether people have to pay the fines or the innocent have to go through the worry and expense of having to appeal.
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