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San Francisco Enlists Bus Cameras For Traffic Law Enforcement
Lashat writes with news that San Francisco's Muni bus system has outfitted 30 buses so far with "cameras capable of snapping photos of vehicles illegally traveling or parking in The City's transit-only lanes," and that 15 months from now, all of Muni's 819 buses will be equipped with the cameras: drivers caught on tape violating the bus lanes will be subject to fines of up to $115. 'The cameras have been instrumental in changing driver behavior. When cars see a bus coming, they get the hell out of the way now,' said John Haley, transit director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni. Now for the scary part: 'We're starting to get a lot of experience with cameras,' said Haley. 'With all the footage, I'm starting to feel a bit like Cecil B. Demille.'"
After coming home from a hard-day's work on a Friday evening, I noticed something awful on Slashdot - Beside those already awful Facebook, Twitter, and G+ icons was a flag icon.
"Mother of God," I thought, and many of you thought the same when you first saw it, instantly knowing what it meant.
First, a little background - Slashdot(then known as Chips and Dips) was initiated by pseudonym Commander Taco in 1997. It was later augmented by pseudonym Hemos and the whole thing became Slashdot. By the way, what was to become one of the foremost discussion sites for science and technology was started by a religious twig and a fat fuck*
* there's a joke there, we're gonna get to it...
Yes, not that joke, but another joke, was that the some of the perceived online proponents of science news were actually Hopeless religious lunatics! And, like CommanderTaco and Hemos, I joined and spewed the filth internalized by priest rape without mentioning the dirty little secret. Not only were the two founders deeply religious, they had a preference for PERL(which, of course, is written and directed by an evangelical lunatic). Larry Wall had raped the two himself while on a religious mission to a Michigan dildo store, and they both gobbled his wholey language (among his other things) down and asked for seconds.
There's a joke here, too - Slashdot considers itself a bastion of free speech.
It prided itself for not deleting any comment, unless the circumstances were so dire that they threatened its own existence. They rightly publicised their first monumental loss, against the church of Scientology. Now it wants to "flag posts." For what? Reporting to homeland security? Flagging is not in the FAQ.
Historically, even though the moderators acted as the Basij,(to quote another Slashdot reader from years ago) charasmatic trolls could not be silenced. Now, with the flag icon, Slashdot has gone full censorship.
If their awful flagging cannot be destroyed by asking or pleading, it must be destroyed by trolling. Citizens - please flag every high-scoring comment you can, and offer a technical explanation why that comment should be flagged. When your comments disappear because of some jackass who doesn't agree with you, attack the advertisers next. Contact their advertising or PR department and say, " I was trying to say online how great your products were, but Slashdot's censorship system prevented others from seeing my comment. " Flood their advertisers with those comments until those awful flag icons disappear entirely and Slashdot releases a statement regretting the use of flags.
Oh, that joke you were wondering about. Hemos is now skinny and Commander Taco is now fat. And the Jew Timothy and his overlords at the JIDF are still in charge of Slashdot.
Who the f*** is "Cecil B. Demille"? Are we supposed to know that name, or what?
Muslims are bad
Muslims areblack
If one came to my team I'd give him the sack.
Drivers are parking in bus lanes? Man, but these people are desperate. I always thought a solution to the parking nightmare in SF and elsewhere would be to modify those car carrier semi trailers so they could be used as mobile mass parking in some fashion; build upwards, in other words. Might block the view from somebody's Queen Anne though, so scratch that.
One can certainly understand the need to enforce the policy - if they created dedicated transit lanes to make public transit more efficient and attractive, then the system collapses if those lanes aren't kept clear and the buses have to travel through the same traffic as everybody.
Taking a step back, though, one wonders if dedicated bus lanes are really the best use of the land. An entire extra 10' lane comes to about 1 acre per mile paved. If the buses are five minutes apart, that's a lot of potential street going almost entirely unused. Worse if they're longer apart. (60 -- 90 minutes in my community. We're "rural" though, so the busses are just there to tease us, not to actually provide a viable transportation option)
That mostly empty lane sure would be tempting to a lot of drivers stuck in traffic.
Perhaps a compromise would be to sell a limited number of license to use that lane. Just enough so that it's sparsely occupied, but not so much that it disrupts the flow of buses. Taxis would be obvious potential customers. Pricing could be auction-style and done periodically. And with bus cameras for enforcement, I see no reason why it couldn't work to everyone's benefit.
without that it's just another regressive tax on the working poor. And before a bunch of /.er's chime in with 'How can you be poor & live in San Francisco', don't forget the rich hire maids, gardeners, bus boys and other low income workers that still have to get to work at their wealthy boss' house. I always found it odd there was always a ghetto nearby every rich community until I realized this.
Maybe it's different in San Francisco and they can get around on the bus system quickly and conveniently. Aw, who the heck am I kidding. Why spend good tax money on public transportation when you can just make the poor get up 2 hours early to ride the bus in.
Now, if they're putting points on your license then I like. Here in Arizona we learned from California's mistake and stopped putting red light cameras in rich neighborhoods where the stay-at-home moms could organize a vote to ban them. We keep 'em in the poor neighborhoods where everyone works two jobs. Unlike a cop a camera doesn't know not to ticket a late model BMW or Mercedes.
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best use of public land would be to stuff more people, each one of them occupying some 10 m2 area with their cars to transport their single person, instead of fitting bus lanes in there, which will provide transportation rate of 1 m2 space occupied per person ?
excuse me, but engineering-wise, that would fail you an exam.
Read radical news here
It's worse than that Jim, not only do they not know anything, they get more fun out of posting "Who is X" rather than looking it up.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Slashdot first post.
Wow, that's right.
We've had 10 years of crappy First Posts but it was in the name of freedom of speech, and NOW we get a "Flag" button? And that actually leads to potentially having the comment *totally disappear*?
When did THAT arrive?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
unlike an automated and autonomous traffic camera, a camera fixed to a bus with a human driver behind the wheel can be seen as an extension of the driver the same way the bus can. the camera hanging from the power lines over the intersection doesn't invite reprisal, but knowing what bus number was on that route at the time the picture was taken and therefore knowing what driver was present when you got busted does invite reprisal. i think it's a bad idea.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Now that our government has been socialistic for decades, you will see it finding new and interesting ways to sting your wallet.
The government is a blood sucking leech.
people park in bus stops valet as well
said the Ram pickup, rustily, "I'm ready for my close-up."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
15 months from now, all of Muni's 819 buses will be equipped with the cameras: drivers caught on tape violating the bus lanes will be subject to fines of up to $115.
Tape? How quaint.
Free Martian Whores!
I might be mistaken, but I do believe in Baltimore, bus drivers have the authority to issue citations. I once parked in a bus stop and didn't realize it, I'm pretty sure the ticket was written by the driver.
Improving San Francisco's MUNI system is pretty important to me. It's been considerably annoying to see cars parked in the bus lane, and it's almost annoying as seeing cars park in the middle of the right lane with their emergency lights on because there's no parking, which more buses would help with! ... As a side note, it's almost impossible to live in San Francisco for an extended period of time with a vehicle and not get a parking ticket. They're ruthless!!
It's funny though, I've lived in Germany for the last half year, and I've found that their transportation system is ten times better than San Francisco's. Don't get me wrong, BART is amazing, but I live in a small town at the moment and its transportation system runs more often than San Francisco's. Paris and Berlin have both train systems that run late, and night trains, while San Francisco's train system stops around 11 pm (then buses run sparsely after that).
Seems like it changed around Feb. 9th. Here's Google's cache of the old moderation page of the FAQ:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KMxelxNspVkJ:http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml+slashdot+institutes+new+flag+abuse+comment+system&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Mxw&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&gbv=1&prmd=imvns&strip=1
Here's Slashdot's previous policy on comments and moderation:
This is a rather huge change in comment policy that wasn't preceded by any announcement on the site that I can find (honestly, I didn't look very hard, though). Were subscribed Slashdot users notified by this change?
http://www.georgiainjurylawblog.com/archives/bus-accidents-cobb-county-uses-school-bus-cameras-to-catch-errant-drivers-prevent-accidents.html
Cobb County has the second largest fleet of school buses in Georgia. The mere thought that nearly a thousand people don't obey the lights on a school bus each day is hard to believe. Hopefully they will release statistics to show how many people they are photographing.
Second story, reported two violations per day under manual system
http://mdjonline.com/pages/full_story/push?article-School+officials+still+having+issues+with+bus+stop+cameras%20&id=15410211
Cobb County bus stats
Transportation Department
at a glance...
913 Bus Drivers
148 Bus Monitors
845 Conventional Buses
275 Special Needs Buses
813 Routes per day
41,978 Bus Stops per day
72,181 Miles Traveled per day
75,642 Students Transported each day
so you figure, if people won't respect school buses I betcha that San Fran certainly has problems with parking or violating bus lanes
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Every vehicle must be retrofitted with a beacon that relays an UID, speed, status of registration, cellphone usage, and any other important information for the vehicle to cell towers, and set up receivers in rural areas where cell reception is poor, if you speed it's transmitted instantly and you get a ticket, if you aren't registered you get a ticket, if you're on your phone while moving you get a ticket, just make it too expensive for idiots to drive.
It's not a right it's a privilege and it's been abused for too long.
You may now mod this out of existence.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This has been in the works for a while. And people have been improperly ticketed.
slashdot=stagnated
Good-bye
The solution to car problems in SF is to get rid of cars. That moves the problem domain but I can't think of how many times I've thought of how fucking great SF would be without all those damned cars everywhere. Maybe just push them out of the city center, don't allow people to drive in the marina either, et cetera. As it is, it's just another noisy collection of imbeciles that it takes ages to get across at traffic time.
Maybe it's possible to introduce a London-style congestion charge which makes you pay either a hefty monthly fee to be able to drive in the centre and have single day permits be worth $10 or so. You can imagine how quickly people will stop driving through the centre if it costs them more money than to take public transport, which would be improved by the sudden influx of money.
Cars are permitted to enter the bus lane if they intend to turn right at the next corner. Granted, a lot of drivers greedily interpret this as license to immediately enter the bus lane as soon as possible for a quick trip down the block to the corner, but it's easy to imagine bus drivers just snapping away at anybody who happens to be in their way--even legitimately--out of annoyance. In fact, I imagine that bus drivers will be encouraged to do so, as this just reeks of yet another city fund-raising scheme. I bike to work in San Francisco every day, and while you do sometimes see drivers trying to jockey for position in the bus lanes, these are usually either a) tourists who don't know better, or b) seasoned veterans who know to watch for buses.
Everyone ins SF knows that this isn't the biggest problem with Muni. The SFMTA which runs MUNI and has been given control things like traffic lights, parking tickets, parking meters, etc. It exists first as a political organization and second, distant second, exists to get people around town. So following it's prime mandate they will continue to extract more and more money from things like parking meters on Sunday and in Golden Gate Park, then spend it on fantastic boondoggles like the Chinatown Subway ($1 billion per mile!) and now cameras on buses.
They like to pin the poor service on things like cars in bus lanes, but how does that explain all the delays of Muni Metros (light rail) when they are in the subway?! No traffic there. I am willing to bet all the money in my pocket that Muni's on-time rate and customer satisfaction do not improve at all as a result of cameras on buses, but they might squeeze an extra couple million from the populace.
FWIW I ride my bike to work nearly every day now and it's fantastic.
This seems like a good idea. I live near SF, and see bus lanes blocked occasionally, usually by double-parked delivery trucks.
SF Muni operates more than typical buses. They have long, articulated buses. They have trolley buses powered from overhead lines. They have street cars running on rails. None of those are very maneuverable. So blocked transit lanes are a big deal, more so than in most cities.
last time the wife and I visited San Francisco we unknowingly got caught in a bus lane and had to go a block or so to get out. Hope there is some leeway for us idiot drivers who don't understand San Francisco bus lanes.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Will they be using those same cameras to make sure the drivers are on time, especially on the weekends?
If they used them to ticket cyclists they'd be rich. Stand at any intersection in San Francisco, count the percentage of cars that violate traffic laws vs cyclists that violate traffic laws.
I'm just guessing here but
cars 80%
Subtract taxis and cars is probably under 5%
what with the car companies actively campaigning against public transportation. I remember how shocked I was to find the plot to Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based on a true story.
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O.k., if you have a car in San Francisco, it's easy to complain about municipal transpo. $2 one way on the bus seems a little expensive, but whatever, divide the cost of car (payment), gas, upkeep, insurance, and tickets and your little jaunt to the Marina to buy secondhand designer baby clothes probably costs you 15 bucks.
It's hard to switch mindset to "slow travel". If I chose to have a car I'd probably use it for most trips over a mile. But everyone who lives in SF physically could not have a car. There's just not enough room. It's a dense city.
.
I am not a fan of this enforcement, but I have a feeling this is inevitable. Sf is quickly putting sensors in all of the parking meters that report back when the parking meter expires. This will make sf a LOT of money. ($55 per violation). Now another $115 for automating the bus zone violations. They are also putting up the traffic light cams that snap pics and issue tickets if a vehicle passing through a red light. (which at times, cannot be avoided)
I live in an RV that I park in San Francisco, and it can be challenging at times... As long as I move it a couple blocks every 3 days, it works out well :D
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
1984.
I'm all for this as long as there are cameras watching the buses and they get ticketed for breaking the law too.
Muni drivers are some of the worst offenders on the road, but it will be a cold day in hell when the SF police give a Muni driver a ticket.
The number one cause of accidents is tailgating.
Yet far fewer tickets are issued for this than speeding. Why? Because we have an easily operated and reliable way to determine speed, but nothing similar to prove tailgating.
However, a video camera looking backwards, a computer linked to the vehicles engine monitors (which record speed, acceleration, deceleration and other information,) can determine EXACTLY how close the vehicle behind is following, provide photographic proof and images of the driver & the license plate.
Such devices can be built en mass for a relatively cheap cost.
Speed enforcement is an example of regulation because of the ability to cheaply measure, instead of pursuing the actual causes of the problem.
Equipping a vehicle with environmental recording devices has become inexpensive, and processing the data is also inexpensive. Recordings greatly reduce trial times and costs, facilitating the promise of a fair and speedy trial, simplify insurance and accident investigation.
Why aren't people asking the important question here: When will this all of this Big Brother crap stop? How intrusive will we allow the State to become before we act? Why doesn't Anonymous point their resources at something constructive? Sure, attacking traffic cameras and the like is a small, token step, but the system as it is must come down. Why are they only attacking one half of the parties (Corporations) complicit in the Corporate/State Fascist partnership?