12 June (Part 1) - They are after your money in Bexleyheath
While
a new bunch of bankers gets ready to open a new branch in Bexleyheath
the other wunch of bankers in Watling Street are opening new piggy banks in
Bexley too. The latest is twenty feet up a pole above the yellow box junction in Upton Road.
Their excuse for enforcing ‘moving traffic violations’ is that it will improve road safety.
Usually Bexley Council will tell you that slowing traffic down improves road safety but when they
are after your money speeding up traffic emerging from side roads improves road safety too.
Cameras at minor junctions like Upton Road are cash cows, pure and simple.
The junction sometimes sees a queue because of traffic waiting to turn right into Avenue Road just
a few yards to the west. (Top left corner of Photo 2 below.) There are no cameras there. The
likely logic is that if the Avenue Road junction ran freely there would be no tail back to Upton Road
and the opportunity for revenue raising might disappear. Much more profitable to prolong
one jam in the hope it will block the adjacent monitored junction.
The fact that the Cabinet Member for Traffic and Transport has several times been heard
in Council complaining that motorists are unfairly targeted as cash cows must surely make
him one of the borough’s biggest hypocrites.
Be very careful when driving through Bexleyheath, or better still, take your business elsewhere.