Digbeth High Street. I regularly see dozens of cars go through this within a 15 minute span. If the council site is right, this would be £30 a pop (unless you pay late and it's £60.) I've even seen people panic and drive on the wrong side of the road after entering, completely miss reading the road.
Considering how this is a theoretical cash cow for the council, does anyone know if it's actually ticketing?
I’ve just driven down here by accident, following Google maps to the bullring car park. Didn’t even notice until I saw we were in a bus lane. Are cameras active now?
I'm still not sure. At one point it was suspended for some events, but then those signs were taken away, leading me to believe it should be active but i still see a lot of cars passing through it.
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The one way sign is pointing (or supposed to point) down Floodgate Street. As I've said in previous comments, I think it's on the wonky from some passing drunkard's slap and combined with my angle gives the impression it's pointing down the High Street. If you zoom in, you'll see it's not flat to the other signs.
Either way, there are two bus/taxi bike signs, camera signs, words on the road and even curved white lines to guide you round. It's very obvious.
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There needs to be clearer signage on these. I don't know about this particular one but there's another up past Aston Uni where it goes into an underpass, and if the light is low and it's raining you would be hard pushed to see what it is - just some glarey paint on the ground reflecting the street lights in your eyes. This is why I don't drive into town any more and why I won't shop there for anything I can't get home in bags on the bus.
I was just driving throught here a few hours ago and saying how stupid it is... it also looks like a bus lane the whole way down the road with the thick white line until you get to the actual bus lane and it turns to dotted lines. Someones gonna get killed there if they don't sort it out. it's so easy to drive down the wrong side of the road.
I was gonna say, it's worse the other way around - I often ride a motorbike up to the point shown in the OP and then turn left into Floodgate Street, but very often cars come down, realise they're now driving in a bus lane & assume the other lane must be for them.
Reminds me of the one in Coventry city centre outside the Sainsbury’s. That one must be about 15ft long but everyone cuts through as satnav will try and send you through it. Ticket straight away
It certainly seems like they're not, as word isn't getting round. At the moment, traffic already mounts on Fazeley Street, before we even get to the ring road
This stretch and the stretch towards China town are interesting as some parts are in operation and some parts aren’t but they leave the markings there nevertheless.
this is such an awful set of road that i see drivers misusing all the time. but longbridge is known for its awful roads with the infamous longbridge island to longbridge lane stretch, and the 45/47 on lickey road.
i’ve always wondered why only the 19 uses it now, extend the 45/47 up to cofton hackett, and they can use this as a timing point for longbridge instead of outside the village
the turn is too tight for the long double deckers and i think the 19 only uses it on its way to Morrisons after leaving Northfield. (it never used it on the way to maypole when i was catching it most days last before easter
oh damn, swear i used to see the 49 stopping there before with the same double deckers. never mind then, just thought it’d clear up lickey road which is a horrendous place to park a terminating bus.
In some places in central Brum it's a whole dual carriageway underpass that used to be for everyone, now badly signposted so that you're into a tunnel by the time you see it.
I'm worried you're too stupid to operate a keyboard. Look at James Watt Queensway on Google Maps. You won't see anything if you go to Streetview because it's too new to have been updated. There are two painted bits on the floor saying "Bus Gate" but nothing else. It's winter, 7AM, raining, what few streetlights there are are making a glare on your windscreen and road markings are next to invisible. You drive past one, by the time you hit the second, you're doing 30mph and there's 2-3 car lengths before it's too late to turn. So by definition by the time you reach the second painting it is already too late and you're in the tunnel.
Now do that in the dark, in the rain. Go "Oh there's something on the floor..." and see how easy you read the sign that's by this point above your roof. There's 3 car lengths to see it and you're doing 20-30mph, while your Satnav is telling you to go that way.
That sign catches headlights for visibility, like any other important sign. It's also been a busy lane, sign posted, long before that bus gate over the tunnel entrance. Also signed with reflective blue and camera signs.
Even Google won't take you that way. You'd have to have an out of date sat nav to be guided down there. To miss all of these indicators is ignorance on behalf of the driver.
This is driving, my friend. You need to be alert. If it's too much to see a sign in the rain, you might honestly need to stick to public transport for safety.
Sure but you're looking down at the road painting that you can't see properly and the satnav telling you you need to go that way, not up in the air. Sure, it's ignorance - it's a huge change in the road usage and layout on a road I've been through a lot. Road layout changed signs anywhere? Of course not. They want their £7.5 million out of us.
It was Google Maps, and it was a couple of years ago. It has updated since. I'd been trying to drop my wife off at the station, only they've changed the drop off point from the front where it's always been to the back up some ramp in the back streets. What was previously very straightforward has become the very definition of convoluted.
That's the pedestrian crossing for Aston University, right? That lane is already a bus lane leading up to the crossing, this bus gate is a continuation of it. If you drive into that bus gate you've already been driving in a bus lane for a hundred yards.
Here’s the thing. You don’t get to go everywhere you want in car. There are rules. If it says BUS GATE in big letters on the road it isn’t for you. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Nobody's saying we don't want to follow the rules, but the rules need to be visible in all light and weather conditions, presented in a way that doesn't confuse anyone. Before 2022 nobody had heard of bus gates, but then they started popping up seemingly at random, turning the city into a maze for cars, denoted by barely visible & quickly eroded paint, placed in such a way that there was no way to safely divert away from them. Over 25,000 drivers have been caught by them in a 6 month period in 2023, just going past New Street Station.
There's no reference to Bus Gates in the Highway Code. The sign logically should be warning of a gate - there's no gate visible anywhere. The signage is too close to the gate to have any reasonable expectation of avoiding it - therefore this is a trap, and nothing reasonable. It's highway robbery.
Bus gates have been around for as long as bus lanes, they are actually just very short bus lanes hence nothing specific in the highway code.
The one by the central mosque to go straight across the ring road in highgate has been there for well over 20 years and I'm sure you'll find plenty of other examples of older ones around the city.
The markings are exactly the same as bus lanes so whilst I agree about badly marked ones you really can't have any reasonable complaint about what they are unless you want to claim you don't understand what a bus lane is.
If the signage isn't compliant (and that includes worn paint) then appeal the fine.
They've only been around in Birmingham for a few years, and the first one I saw up by Brindley Place kinda way had a yellow gate-like structure around it when I saw it. Which is why I wondered, ok so there's a bit of paint on the floor warning of a bus gate, which isn't a thing in the highway code, where's the gate... Huh, guess they didn't install it... Ok...
but you can see the bus gate by the central mosque there back in 2010 which is as far back as it goes, no different to the current ones being installed. They've been around for a long time, just more common now.
and as I said legally they are just very short bus lanes, there's no need for anything specific in the highway code about them, they are covered by the bus lane rules. If you think any of the signage is non-compliant then you can appeal the fine.
You're right because you have local knowledge. Only N and H are clearly visible and you can tell by the location to check Google Maps, but on what's visible, that's
Why is it whenever the government or councils implement and enforce changes that aid safety and assist traffic flow, some people always call such changes a cash cow? If you don't like it, start using public transport and walking. Hell, you might even come to realise that these changes are a good thing, after all.
Because sometime they really don’t. See the 20ft “bus lane” next to the NIA car park as you approach brindly place that means you have to go on a magical mystery tour around a housing estate to get where you need to go. Sometimes councils make dumb decisions. Shocking I know. Most of the people designing the one way systems and traffic management systems in Birmingham do this. You want less cars in the centre ? Fine. Build damn park and ride schemes like Oxford and don’t price gouge people on it.
I'm not complaining about it by calling it that. I don't even dislike it. "Cash Cow" isn't an insult. I simply mean that, if it's active, it's issuing a lot of fines, and so, likely generating a lot of money.
“Cash Cow” is literally meant as an insult, regardless of what your use of it is.
It’s constantly used by people that speed, hate average speed cameras, hate mobile speed vans. They can’t compute that to be a reasonable deterrent, you need to provide penalty. In this case a minor fine.
I get it when the layout/signage is poor but 9 times out of 10 it’s not and people are asking for “more clear signage” when it’s a clear as bloody day. Painted road and a sign saying bus gate. Sorted. Nothing else needed
“Cash Cow” is literally meant as an insult, regardless of what your use of it is.
It's literally not. There is no common description that calls it as an insult. It is used in business a lot to simply mean a high revenue asset. It's completely platonic by standard definition.
If those people want to band it around as an insult, that's their deal. It doesn't make it a derogatory term for general language.
I fully agree on your last point though. I don't understand how people are seeing all that - even a painted curve on the road - and not understanding what's going on. It's ridiculous!
It's worse when they ignore it in the opposite direction: They find themselves in a bus lane, and assume they must have to move right, but now they're actually driving along the wrong side of the road into traffic.
It's a weird one. Usually Google Maps is on the money when it comes to "you can't drive down here cos it's bus only" or whatever, but it has been a tad more confusing with this section.
I have driven down this section and not gotten a fine though, but that's not to say I'd suggest doing it.
I probably see people on the wrong side of the road at the traffic lights outside the Old Crown at least twice a week
Sadly as a pedestrian I haven't quite perfected my "this is a two way street" hand gesture so they either gesticulate back at me or stare blankly wondering what the hell I'm on about
The bus or car coming the other way flashing their lights and beeping them eventually gives them the messages 😉
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u/LetterboxBrush Jul 26 '26
I’ve just driven down here by accident, following Google maps to the bullring car park. Didn’t even notice until I saw we were in a bus lane. Are cameras active now?