A modal filter bus gate introduced by Devon County Council five years ago as part of active travel proposals to prioritise cycling and walking in Wonford Road is to be the first of five new Exeter Automatic Number Place Recognition (ANPR) camera sites.
Devon County Council is to begin issuing penalty charge notices to motorists contravening active travel, bus lane and one-way street restrictions after the Department of Transport agreed to grant it new moving traffic offence enforcement powers.
The new powers came into effect in December and will be used for enforcement across eight locations, five of which are in Exeter.
These include the morning inbound bus lane in Cowick Street between St Thomas Church and the junction with Buller Road, where 545 contraventions were recorded over a three-day period in January 2023, and the 24-hour Wonford Road bus gate, where just over 1,000 contraventions were recorded during a three-day period in April 2023.
The Wonford Road modal filter was first introduced as a temporary measure during the pandemic, with exemptions for buses and cycles, then made permanent in 2021 following a public consultation. An exemption to allow taxis to pass through the filter was subsequently added.
Exeter cycle route E9 Wonford Road bus gate modal filter
The county council will also use its new powers to enforce an inbound morning and evening bus lane in Fore Street, Heavitree, between Butts Road and Church Street, where 181 contraventions were recorded over three days in March 2023.
It will also install cameras on a 24-hour outbound bus lane in Topsham Road between Buckerell Avenue and Burnthouse Lane, where only 68 contraventions were recorded over three days in January 2023, and a one-way restriction introduced on Iron Bridge in Exeter city centre in 2021.
This restriction was initially intended to reduce traffic displaced onto the bridge by one-way restrictions in Queen Street which were subsequently reversed in 2023. Only fifteen contraventions were recorded here on a single day in September 2022.
Temporary active travel infrastructure in Queen Street in 2022
Devon County Council held a public consultation on its plans to adopt new moving traffic enforcement powers in 2023 after it successfully applied to the Department for Transport for the new powers the preceding November.
It says that during the first six months after cameras are installed at each location it will send a warning letter to motorists the first time they are caught contravening the rules. They will receive a penalty charge notice – not to be confused with a fixed penalty notice – if they are caught again.
After the initial six-month period all offending motorists will receive penalty charge notices.
The county council also says funds generated from the notice will be ring-fenced to cover enforcement cameras costs, with any surplus restricted for “highway or road improvement projects, public transport provision and other environmental projects”.
Moving traffic offence enforcement could previously only be carried out by the police.
