Cyprus Mail 27 February 2020 - article by Jean Christou
The last experiment with traffic cameras can still be seen on the roads
The pilot programme for the introduction of traffic cameras, slated to begin in 2020, has been postponed again, until next year, Transport Minister Yiannis Karousis said on Wednesday.
Karousos, speaking after a meeting with Akel leader Andros Kyprianou, said one of the bidders for the project had taken recourse to the Tenders Review Authority over an issue with the contract.
“It appears that the pilot programme will be delayed until 2021,” said Karousos. The issue at hand, he said, concerned an appeal by one of the bidders against a provision included by the contracting authority, which would be the state.
He said “according to regulations and legislation” this would have to be cleared up with the Tenders Review Authority before the programme could proceed.
Karousos said the hope was that the tenders authority would be able to complete its review by the end of next month and then the bid could finally be awarded to the winning contractor.
After years of delays, he said, ideally the pilot programme was to have started this year if there had been no issues put before the review authority. “The goal was to begin implementation in November. Now with the appeal we cannot go ahead with the offer. We have to wait for the ruling. So let’s go to 2021,” he added. The initial plan was to have full implementation of the plan for a camera system installation by 2022 following the 2020 pilot programme.
The pilot plan called for a total of 90 cameras nationwide which would be stationary and 20 mobile cameras. The cost of the full system is expected to reach some €35.2m for the first five years.
Talks of bringing back traffic cameras after they were briefly introduced over a decade ago and then challenged and withdrawn, have resurfaced over the years and the current process had looked set to finally see a rollout on the island’s roads.
