Bemused onlookers watched as a man sat in a plastic chair, only getting up and manually lowering the bollards if motorists had a right to enter.
The two rising bollards were finally installed in Long Causeway, Peterborough, alongside eight fixed ones, in May, months after Peterborough City Council chiefs first promised them in a bid to make pedestrians safer and stop drivers parking illegally.
The aim was to monitor and control the bollards remotely by CCTV operators.
However, a month on, work to connect a five metre telephone line linking the bollards to a nearby box, which would then hook them up to a CCTV nerve centre in Bridge Street, has yet to be carried out by BT, said the council, even though an order had been placed in May.
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In the meantime, a parking attendant and, more recently, a contract worker, have been put in place to manually supervise the bollards between 10.30am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday, and 9am to 5pm, on Saturdays.
The system should work by a driver pressing a button and asking the CCTV operator to let them through.
Motorists will then have to show they have the authority to enter the pedestrianised zone.
The CCTV centre operator will then lower and raise the bollards at the touch of a button.
Council executive director for operations Paul Phillipson said: "There has been a delay in the telephone line being installed, and so we have employed a security guard to operate the bollards manually until the line is in place.
"The security guard is being employed on an hourly rate, but we cannot reveal exactly what rate this is, as the information is commercially sensitive.
"This has been a real opportunity for us to assess the usage of the bollards and to educate drivers on access to the city centre ready for when the new public realm is unveiled."
A spokeswoman for BT said: "We are looking into this matter and we will investigate."
The council vowed to introduce the bollards after a knife-wielding man ploughed his car into shoppers in Long Causeway before stabbing a man who tried to stop him.
Related:
Long Causeway incident: Afternoon at the shops is turned into terror, 7 January 2008.
Video: Nigel's bollards dream comes true, 30 April 2009.
