We have been writing about the implementation of AI cameras on city buses in various regions of the country for a while now, but the most populous city in the United States recently had a massive hiccup in the rollout of its cameras. As with other cities, New York’s AI camera program was slated to begin by issuing warning citations prior to issuing actual tickets, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) told NBC New York that some of its cameras were improperly programmed. This improper programming caused the cameras to erroneously ticket nearly 900 legally parked cars and issue fines to thousands more vehicles that should have only received warnings.
The buses that issued the erroneous citations were running on the M79 route and the Bx35 bus routes, both of which were still in the warning phase of the enforcement process. Any violators were supposed to receive no-penalty warning citations regardless of their violation, but instead received fines in the mail alongside nearly 900 perfectly legally parked vehicles. NBC New York reported:
According to the New York City Department of Transportation, the city’s automated cameras – including red light cameras, speed cameras, and bus lane cameras – issue more than 40,000 violations per day. The DOT says a human being is tasked with reviewing every one of those machine-generated infractions, but the agency declined to say how many employees are dedicated to the human review process. The DOT also declined to say how human reviewers missed the hundreds of erroneous bus lane violations issued along the M79 and Bx35 routes.
The MTA said all of the 3,800 mistaken violations have been reversed and any payments made prior to voiding the violations are being refunded. The transit agency also said the software misconfiguration that resulted in errant violations has been corrected.
The company Hayden AI has an $83 million contract with the city to install and maintain more than a thousand of these AI camera systems but declined to answer NBC’s questions regarding the erroneous violations. The MTA’s claim that humans review every single machine-generated infraction and yet failed to catch the thousands of unwarranted violations is laughable. NBC said that according to procurement documents, the MTA is planning to pay Hayden AI an additional $58 million to add this technology to 1,000 more buses, bringing the total price of the program to about $141 million.
The MTA says that since the AI camera ticketing system launched, bus speeds are up about five percent. NYC’s Department of Finance says that the 1,020 bus cameras have caught more than 293,000 vehicles illegally blocking bus lanes so far this year, a 570 percent increase over 2021. That has increased revenue from bus lane fines from $4.3 million annually to $20.9 million. The first citation for blocking a bus lane costs the violator $50, and any future violations result in an increased fine of $250 for each subsequent violation. The city says only a small fraction of violators receive a second citation.