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Nice-Antibes - Promenade des Anglais (copyright Simon MacMichael).jpegSoftware that detects motorists blocking cycle lanes being trialled in Nice
If you’re currently contemplating parking your car on a cycle lane along the Côte d'Azur, think again. Because for the next month, any vehicles left on Nice’s cycling infrastructure will be subject to an experimental form of video ticketing, which has so far resulted in 50 motorists a day receiving fines for blocking bike lanes.
The three-month trial, which began in early December, involves the use of new video software able to automatically detect illegally parked cars, which will then be checked by an official, reports The Connexion.
Nice, which has 73 kilometres of cycle lanes and paths, also has more cameras per square metre than anywhere else in France, with 3,900 dotted around the city.
The pilot scheme is being tested in nine areas deemed to be particularly susceptible to cycle lane parking. Any car, lorry, scooter, or motorbike parked on a bike path is identified by an algorithm, and after one minute – the time needed for the parking to be recognised as an offence – the software will automatically notify an operator of Nice’s Urban Surveillance Centre (CSU), who will then be able to validate the infraction and, using their discretion, issue a fine.
🚲 Découvrez l’#IA destinée à protéger les cyclistes tout au long des pistes cyclables à #Nice06.
💡 Une intelligence artificielle qui permet de détecter en temps réel les véhicules stationnés sur les pistes cyclables à travers la ville.#ILoveNice #Nice06 pic.twitter.com/awNEH8kdV5
— Ville de Nice (@VilledeNice) December 2, 2022
According to the Connexion, the CSU will show “zero tolerance” to delivery drivers, who are commonly viewed as the city’s worst offenders for bike lane parking.
One delivery driver told the website that Nice is already “a nightmare” due to the number of cycle lanes in the city, and that the trial will cause “chaos” because there will now be “nowhere to park”.
However, Daniele Sottile, a member of the cycling campaign group Nice à Velo, believes that the experiment has been a long time coming and will hopefully have a positive effect on road safety in the city.
“Nine times out of ten, there is someone in the way [of the cycle lane]. Often, it’s delivery people, sometimes cars parked for five minutes, but very often scooters or motorcycles,” Sottile says.
“It puts us in danger because the cyclist has to get out of the lane without looking back. We’ve been asking for this for a long time, so we’re happy. We hope that, in a few months, we will see the effects.”
> Councils get new powers to fine drivers parking in bike lanes
Nice’s First Deputy Mayor, Anthony Borré, says that 20 CSU employees will be working around the clock as part of the scheme, which – if viewed as a success – will be extended in the coming months.
“The software was made in France and cost us €100,000. At the end of the three months, if the experimentation phase is ‘conclusive’, the city council intends to extend it to other roads,” Borré, said.
According to Gaël Nofri, the city’s deputy mayor in charge of transport, traffic, and parking, 6,000 tickets are issued each year in Nice, two-thirds of which are the result of video surveillance.
> Transport for London to begin fining motorists caught driving in mandatory cycle lanes
In 2020, the Department for Transport (DfT) gave local authorities in England the power to use CCTV to fine drivers who park or load illegally in mandatory cycle lanes.
“Cars parked on cycle lanes pose problems for cyclists, often forcing them into the flow of traffic,” the DfT said in a statement at the time.
“With approved camera devices, it will be easier for those local authorities with civil parking enforcement powers to take action against cars illegally parked on mandatory cycle lanes, allowing cyclists to complete their journeys without deviating from their path.”
Last June, Transport for London began using existing CCTV cameras to issue fines to motorists driving in cycle lanes and cycle tracks at key locations in the city, a power previously only enforced by the police.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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17 comments
Ah, whilst searching for a picture on one of the parking enforcement video-cars I have stumbled upon the problem of why they don't work for cycle lane parking.
It turns out the reason is ... they work too well
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/more-800-tickets-illegal...
Ah yes, indeed. It's our government, helpfully keeping everyone moving, by banning things which might impede anyone's right to keep moving in a vehicle then just stop moving somewhere.
The government's own page on this says - I'll just stop you there and say again - it's not a tabloid, it's not Nigel Farage having a rant, this was the government's own page here (from the era of Eric Pickles):
We're all equal, but some (drivers) are more equal than others.
But we already have video-equipped drive-by parking enforcement cars. From a technological point of view I fail to see how the nature of the illegal parking makes any difference; double-yellow or cycle lane, ticket the lot of them all alike.
With double yellow you can stop to load / unload (or board/alight) continuously for up to 20 minutes. As such you can't just drive past - someone has to observe that no permitted activity is taking place.
That's for double yellows, but mandatory cycle lanes (i.e. solid white lines) are not eligible for loading/unloading so it's easier to prosecute vehicles parked there.
Except when it's totally legal and it's totally unclear without some local historical knowledge that it is...
https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/underhand-law-change-undermines-mandatory...
Scotland had the chance to sort that a while back and said no.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that.
The DfT does appear to be so far up the arse of the motor industry they can check for tonsilitis.
Are there any mandatory painted cycle lanes in the former Avon area? I've only seen hatched/advisory lanes, the ones with wands, and then the one 'proper' segregated lane along Baldwin Street in Bristol.
Can't think of any
"......an average of 50 infractions a day....."
They must be a lot more law-abiding on the Cote d'Azur, or the system has very poor sensitivity.
Surely our cash strapped local authorities should be fitting this; they could replace all the government grant that's been cut in the last 13 years.
there must be more to it than that it just spots things in the wrong lanes and automatically issues a ticket, because London boroughs have had cameras setup for at least a decade that can do that.
...but the War on Motorists!
Don't forget the right to park wherever they choose.
I did love the delivery drivers complaining.
how about you park in the road? Oh that would be "bad" but parking in cycle lanes s "good"? 😂
I work for a company that is starting to use similar software. The issue is that before this someone had to be looking at the screen, and employing people to watch screens is expensive. So only a few camaras are watched at any one time. With this system the software will pick up the car parked and then flag up to the operator. Result is that one operator can effectively cover lots of cameras.
Christ, can you imagine the howls of protest if any council attempted something similar in this country.