A total of 40 Road and Transport Enforcement Officers – rising to 80 next spring – have been deployed by the Major of London and TfL to crack down on congestion, and will be deployed at key junctions and roads.
The team will also work closely with the TfL-funded Metropolitan Police Roads and Transport Policing Command, which was launched by the Mayor in January and, with 2,300 officers, is the largest policing command anywhere in the country.
The team will help to move unlawfully stopped vehicles, issue PCNs to illegally parked vehicles and clear unnecessary or poorly set-up roadworks. They will also access real-time information and data and send intelligence back from the street to TfL’s control room.
The move follows a similar approach put in place at the Blackwall Tunnel in 2010, said to have helped reduce collisions, incidents and events causing congestion at the tunnel by 32%.
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson MP said: “This is one of a number of targeted actions we’re taking to tackle congestion and reduce delays on the roads. In January we launched the Met’s Roads and Transport Policing Command and this new team will work closely with them to help keep London moving. They will play a key role in tackling problems that lead to tailbacks and take a zero-tolerance approach towards inconsiderate or illegal behaviour that can cause unnecessary gridlock.”
The team will be alerted to congestion build-ups both through TfL’s network of traffic cameras and through utilising the ‘eyes and ears’ of the almost 25,000 bus drivers.
In addition, they will work with businesses along the routes to help improve the way they receive and manage deliveries, giving advice on re-timing or consolidation to reduce the impact of deliveries during peak times.
Leon Daniels, TfL’s managing director of surface transport, said: “This new team of officers is being deployed to actively solve the problems that cause delays for drivers and bus passengers. These are often caused by inconsiderate behaviour, like illegal stopping or parking in bus lanes, and the new team will tackle this head on – adopting a zero tolerance approach to obstructions that cause congestion.
“We work hard to keep London’s traffic moving every day, through our state of the art traffic signal technology, Traffic Control Centre and innovations in social media. Having more people on the ground will deliver an even better service to all of London’s road users.”
