Mechelen gets the scoop for Flanders
A first for Mechelen: there will be the first mobile route control in Flanders. The new cameras do not measure speed, but look at cut-through traffic. If a car enters an area for local traffic and exits it almost immediately, then it was not local traffic but cut-through traffic. This driver can then expect a fine at home. If you check in and only check out much later with the second camera, then you were regular destination traffic.
Two followers
The new cameras are not yet in use. Two trailers are currently being converted into mobile section control. The intention is that they will be installed in Mechelen in April 2022 to fine-tune cut-through traffic. The two trailers together would cost about 100,000 euros.
‘We cannot deploy the cameras everywhere at once. We do this with random samples, but we are convinced that they have a deterrent effect and that administrators will think twice,” Alexander Vandersmissen, mayor of Mechelen, told Gazette of Antwerp.
Mobile route checks in the Netherlands
The two carts in Mechelen are not the first of their kind. More than fifteen years ago, Flevoland had the first mobile route control in Europe. This one was intended to catch speed drivers. There were quite a few technical glitches in the system, so after a few years the program was stopped.
