Transportation planners and police don't always think before they act, causing grief and frustration for law-abiding people cited for minor offenses like parking in the wrong place, making a wrong turn or driving in the wrong lane when they aren't entirely to blame.

Not surprisingly, the latest situation occurred Downtown on Smithfield Street, where a contra-flow lane that runs in the opposite direction of regular one-way traffic has been returned to buses-only use over two blocks between the Boulevard of Allies and Fort Pitt Boulevard.

The lane was opened to regular traffic as well as buses in January 2002 as part of traffic mitigation during the reconstruction of Fort Pitt Boulevard eastbound. Since then, it became a convenient shortcut to the Smithfield Street Bridge as well as a daily routine for many drivers.

On June 2, several days after the Port Authority issued a brief news release about restricting the lane to buses again, police staged a "crackdown," pulling over dozens of people for illegally driving on it.

Pam Gianoglio, who lives in the city's Observatory Hill neighborhood, was cited after she made a right turn from the Boulevard of Allies onto the buses-only lane on Smithfield Street. She failed to see the newly posted sign -- the only sign -- prohibiting the turn.

"After waiting behind a city bus and a large van, and while remaining aware of pedestrians, I made the turn as I had done many times in the past," she wrote, only to spot a Pittsburgh Police Department van and a half-dozen motorcycle cops around the First Avenue intersection.

"I had no idea what was going on until a police officer shouted, 'Pull over. This is a bus lane.' He did not hesitate to write a $108 ticket," Mrs. Gianoglio said. "I would have never done it if I thought I made an illegal turn, but the officer seemed to believe all of us making the turn were doing it deliberately and defiantly. Folks in cars behind me looked just as upset and dumbfounded."

This is not an argument against the special bus lanes; they're a great idea and function well. Restoration on the last two blocks of Smithfield Street was a joint effort of the Port Authority, Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership and city officials to improve bus movements in the central business district, including making it easier for buses coming off the Smithfield Street Bridge to make left turns onto Fort Pitt Boulevard.

But motorists' information about the contra-flow bus lanes created decades ago on Wood and Smithfield streets has not been maintained, expanded or updated for years. Buses-only signs are not prominent; they're lost in the sea of other signs for everything from directions and "no parking" to bus stops and pedestrian crossings.

The situation on the two-block stretch of Smithfield involved drivers going the same direction as buses, not the opposite direction on a potential collision course with buses, something that happens all too often on the rest of the contra-flow lanes, nearly always involving DUI drivers or confused, out-of-town visitors.

Police used to joke, "We catch someone from Ohio every night."

What should have been done?

• Large advisory signs and portable flashing electronic message boards should have been in place at least two weeks before regular traffic was banned from the contra-flow lane;

• The universal diamond-shape "bus lane" symbols designating contra-flow lanes, the same as those designating HOV lanes, should have been painted over the entire length of Smithfield, north to where the lane begins at Liberty Avenue, in order to increase public awareness about the lane being off-limits to cars and trucks. "Bus Lane" should have been painted prominently on the road pavement; and

• Once the contra-flow lane was restricted to use by buses, transit police should have been posted there for two weeks to wave off motorists. For the next two weeks, when police stopped people like Mrs. Gianoglio, they should have written a warning, not a $108 ticket.

Those responsible for restoring the contra-flow lane to buses-only use did one thing correctly: They plopped down plastic barricades in the left-turn lane on the Boulevard of Allies to physically prevent drivers from errantly turning onto Smithfield Street.

"I know it was irresponsible of me to make the turn based upon my familiarity of Downtown driving, but I feel completely violated," she said. "I don't know what lesson police and public officials were trying to teach us, but I think there are more positive ways to influence young professionals and others trying to make a life here."

Amen to that.