Drivers rack up £14m in fines in new cycle zones
Unwitting motorists are accidentally straying into new ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods’ — and facing £130 penalties
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Protesters send a message to the council in Lewisham, southeast London, where there have been more fines than anywhere else in the capital
When Ivan Izikowitz moved across London to help his wife during lockdown, he did not notice the new no-entry signs that marked a low-traffic scheme.
His wife’s catering business in Lewisham needed help with deliveries and Izikowitz, 57, saw no need to change his address with the DVLA. When the engineer returned to his former home, in Finchley, in February, he found 58 fixed penalty notices, demanding £7,500.
In the past year motorists have paid 250,000 fines, totalling £14 million, for driving into cycle-friendly low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in just ten of London’s 32 boroughs, according to figures disclosed under freedom of information laws. Councils closed roads to through traffic under the government’s £250 million Emergency Active Travel Fund.
LOW TRAFFIC NEIGHBOURHOODS
Fines collected by council
Money in fines received via automatic number plate recognition in low traffic neighbourhoods
Lewisham
£3,684,080
Southwark
£2,475,720
Lambeth
£2,401,998
Enfield
£2,230,800
Hackney
£1,746,794
Islington
£1,101,915
Ealing
£446,440
Merton
£33,670
Hounslow
£17,225
Camden
£8,125
There are LTN schemes outside the capital in Birmingham, Leeds, Oxford, and elsewhere, but they do not yet have powers to fine motorists using automatic number plate recognition.
Annie Kirby, a dementia support worker, was so incensed to get three £130 traffic tickets in quick succession for accidentally driving into an LTN near her home in Lewisham, in the southeast of the capital, that she became a part-time vigilante. In one afternoon she alerted 204 motorists that they were about to be fined for entering one of the 100 “green” neighbourhood schemes that have popped up in the capital since the start of the pandemic. Her local scheme, the Lee Green LTN, has generated £3.7 million in fines since it opened last summer.
Izikowitz, who now lives in Lewisham, had his fines struck out with the help of Janet Daby, Labour MP for Lewisham East, and Kirby overturned her own fines. But she vowed to help others when she heard that people were going into debt and losing sleep over the charges. “If you object to the LTN you’re seen to be a petrolhead. That’s just not true,” she said. “There were elderly and disabled residents who had absolutely no idea it was in place.”
Southwark, also in southeast London, levied £2.5 million in three months from two schemes and one, in Dulwich Village, generated 22,424 fines in seven weeks. Fines typically have a face value of £130 or half that if paid within 14 days.
In neighbouring Lambeth, the council has netted £2.4 million from 53,000 tickets and one scheme in Streatham Hill generated £1.4 million. A single junction, at Downton Avenue and Hillside Road, has caught 15,126 motorists since November. Meanwhile Enfield has collected £2.2 million, Hackney £1.7 million and Islington £1.1 million.
Adam Tranter, founder of BikeIsBest, a bicycle industry campaign to promote everyday cycling, defended LTNs.
“The number of registered vehicles has doubled since 1991 from 20 million to 40 million vehicles and residential roads have been used as a pressure valve for that increase. At some point we have to buck the trend and get more people cycling and walking for short journeys.” He said there should be leniency for first-time offenders.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drivers-rack-up-14m-in-fines-in-new-cycle-zones-hszmc3rxj?shareToken=f6569ea9c021667f8706aed316becd4e (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/drivers-rack-up-14m-in-fines-in-new-cycle-zones-hszmc3rxj?shareToken=f6569ea9c021667f8706aed316becd4e)