In its efforts to reduce the number of vehicles blocking public bus routes, the MTA is expanding its surveillance program as a means of catching those motorists who are illegally double parked.
On Tuesday, the agency signed a $114 million contract to install cameras on thousands of buses that will automatically ticket drivers along their routes. MTA officials said they plan to have the cameras on nearly 1,000 buses by the end of the year, and in three years, the agency plans to have them on around 2,000 buses, which is more than a third of its whole fleet.
Drivers will only face a fine if they’re caught obstructing a bus route or stop for more than five minutes, and for that to work, two buses equipped with the cameras will need to pass the same illegally parked car.
“Our hope is we probably won’t get to the entire fleet because that’s probably unnecessary to change behavior,” New York City Transit President Richard Davey said on Tuesday. “But over the next couple of years we’ll see how this improves bus speeds.”
This deal expands an MTA pilot program that has installed cameras on roughly 600 buses to issue parking tickets since 2019, but only to drivers parked in bus lanes. The new technology advances that program, and allows the equipment to also ticket any driver double parked along bus routes without bus lanes, as well as cars illegally parked in front of bus stops.
According to MTA officials, the older bus cameras have issued 328,000 tickets since 2019, and the speed rate of buses with the technology on their route has increased roughly 5%.
“Automated camera enforcement is a huge advance toward the fast, reliable bus service New Yorkers need and deserve,” Riders Alliance spokesperson Danny Pearlstein wrote in a statement. “More than 2 million riders every day are stuck on the slowest buses in the nation. Double parking is an enormous obstacle to better buses. Thanks to last year’s state budget, double parkers are on notice that bus routes are for bus riders not car storage.”
The first time a driver is caught by one of the cameras, drivers will face a $50 fine. The citation rises to $250 if they’re caught five or more times in a 12-month period.
