New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) issued over 400,000 traffic violation tickets in the past five months based on footage captured by surveillance cameras on buses, following the implementation of automated camera enforcement program in August last year.
MTA officially launched the “Automated Camera Enforcement Program” on 14 bus routes in June. The program enables the cameras on buses to capture violations such as illegal parking and bus lane obstructions, automatically identify the license plate numbers of offending vehicles, and issue fines. The enforcement began in August.
According to a report released by data analyst Jehiah Czebotar, the total fines collected from MTA’s camera enforcement program between 2023 and 2024 amounted to a staggering $225 million. Since August 2024, the expanded “Automated Camera Enforcement” (ACE) program has issued over 400,000 violations within five months.
The precursor to the “Automated Camera Enforcement Program” was the “Automated Bus Lane Enforcement” (ABLE) program, which MTA first implemented on Select Bus Service routes in 2010.
In 2019, the program was expanded to include all bus lanes, but initially only monitored violations in red bus lanes, allowing other infractions affecting bus operations to persist.
At the end of 2023, MTA significantly broadened enforcement, allowing bus cameras to penalize “any violations affecting bus passage,” regardless of whether they occurred in bus lanes. In August 2024, MTA launched the ACE program on 623 buses along 14 routes, expanding it further in November to include 1,000 buses on 34 routes.
During 2023 to 2024, the number of tickets issued by cameras far exceeded those issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) during the same period. According to data reports, violations captured by cameras in bus lanes and bus stops accounted for 76.4% of the city’s total violations, with this proportion soaring to 93% in December 2024.
Apart from issuing tickets, MTA highlighted that since the implementation of the ACE program, bus speeds have increased by an average of 5%, with some routes experiencing up to a 25% boost in speed. Additionally, bus-related traffic accidents have dropped by 20%, and on routes equipped with cameras, bus emissions have decreased by 5% to 10%.