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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.'"
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
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!
There's no automation. Flagged comments will be sent to the editors to review. Our two options once we see them will be to ignore the report or to downmod the comment.
The comments will still be readable for anyone who wants to browse at -1. The purpose is simply to more quickly find and downmod spam and things like the racist copypastas.
If you're curious, there were about 60 reported comments when I pulled up the page this afternoon (including the one I'm responding to). I've gone through half so far, and haven't downmodding any yet today.