The Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) is escalating its efforts to promote roadway safety and efficiency by expanding automated bus lane enforcement with the help of artificial intelligence.
The transit system is now using automated bus lane enforcement citations issued using AI technology developed by Hayden AI. City buses will have two small forward-facing cameras mounted on windshields to capture evidence of any illegal parking and other traffic infringements related to bus lanes.
The cameras will record 10-second video clips of the infraction, a photo of the violation, the vehicle’s license plate image, and the time and location of the incident. That information is then securely transmitted to cloud storage that is only accessible by transit law enforcement officials. This designated group of personnel, rather than the AI software, reviews the incidents to decide if a citation is warranted.
AC Transit plans to equip 100 buses with AI-enabled cameras by September 2024, extending automated enforcement to other bus stops across its network.
“Safety is more than just a part of our mission statement; it is a real-time commitment to our riders and frontline employees,” AC Transit Media Affairs Manager Robert Lyles told Industry Insider — California in an email. “Since the launch of the bus rapid transit system called Tempo in the summer of 2020, motorists along the Tempo-Line 1T corridor have increasingly parked and blocked bus-only lanes despite using forward-facing cameras. This has created significant safety issues, especially for ADA riders.”
Witnessing a rise in these infractions, AC Transit opted to increase the measures it was taking to curb these incidents. Vehicles found illegally parked in the bus-only lanes of the Tempo corridor will be subject to a $110 fine, which must be paid within 21 days of issuance. This includes all vehicles, including taxis, ride-shares like Uber and Lyft, and delivery trucks.
Before this latest tech deployment, AC Transit helped push through legislation that allows transit agencies across the state to use cameras to cite vehicles illegally parked in transit-only lanes.
Tempo-Line 1T’s forward-facing cameras began issuing citations in November 2020, following an extensive public outreach and education campaign.
After these efforts didn’t have the desired impact, additional steps were taken using AI to streamline the process and curb violations. The AI-enabled camera software and hardware was developed specifically for object detection and trained to identify lane lines, bus lanes, bus stop dimensions, and bus sizes to pinpoint violations.
“We recognized the need to develop new operating strategies to curb and eliminate illegal parking and blocking of the lanes,” Lyles said via email. “Automated lane enforcement, using artificial intelligence, has proven significantly better than Tempo’s original forward-facing camera software during testing.”
He says that Hayden AI’s software has been successful in Santa Monica, Washington, D.C., and New York City.
The new cameras are designed to focus only on the lanes without capturing any interior bus activities to ensure the proper use of AI technology. Images that are not related to a violation are destroyed within 15 days, while images capturing violations are retained for six months unless contested. The evidence is kept for 60 days after the citation’s final resolution in disputed cases.
According to AC Transit, the AI cameras do not possess facial recognition or other biometric capabilities.
