By Mark Prado, The Marin Independent Journal, Novato, Calif.
Golden Gate Transit will spend almost $1 million to upgrade its buses with improved on-board security camera equipment.
Buses have a total of eight cameras, most in the interior, which provide a record that can assist law enforcement, including searches for missing people, as well as help the transit system determine liability in accidents, among other things.
The project will replace aged and obsolete security camera systems on existing buses and standardize camera systems across the 177-bus fleet, according to transit officials. By using Wi-Fi technology already on buses, the video system will allow for real-time video streaming as well as remote downloads to view footage as needed.
The new technology also lets operators know electronically if part of the system is not working, an aspect dubbed “remote health monitoring.”
“Improving our transit technology provides us with a much more streamlined operation,” said Priya Clemens, transit spokeswoman. “We’ll be able to make sure cameras are operational remotely, which will make them much more reliable and will need less downtime.”
The bus fleet has 97 new buses already equipped with updated video surveillance equipment, but 80 older buses have systems that are obsolete and no longer supported by a defunct manufacturer, Transit Surveillance Systems.
While the older equipment is maintained, reliability and quality have severely degraded over the past 10-plus years. Additionally on older buses, staff has to go to a bus and plug into the camera system to download video.
The $900,000 security camera project — approved Thursday by the Golden Gate Bridge district’s Transportation Committee — will replace the 80 obsolete camera systems. While the newer 97 district buses have modern equipment, they were never set up for remote video retrieval, so that feature will be added as part of the work.
“The goals of this project are enhanced safety of customers and employees through the strong deterrent effect of video security surveillance, mitigation of risk and liability for the district by providing for enhanced incident and accident investigation capabilities, and lower operation and maintenance costs through remote system health monitoring and remote video retrieval,” read a staff report on the project.
Work is expected to start in the coming months.
The effort is being helped along by an $800,000 state grant, funded by Proposition 1B, a bond state voters approved in 2006 that provides money for transit security, among other items. Those dollars will be combined with another almost $100,000 in federal grant money.
About 22,000 people ride Golden Gate Transit buses each weekday, primarily in Marin, San Francisco and Sonoma counties.
©2016 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
