AC Transit now uses AI-powered cameras to detect vehicles illegally parked at bus stops, including taxis, rideshare vehicles and delivery trucks.
The program, which began on Wednesday, includes all bus stops of the bus lines throughout the agency's service area.
For the primary two months, drivers identified by police as violating the bus stop law will receive a warning sent by mail to the registered owner of the vehicle. Starting October 7, the warnings will likely be replaced by a $110 effective, also sent by mail.
The recent program builds on the successful use of AI-equipped cameras to detect illegal stopping and parking at Tempo Line 1T stations and in bus lanes.
AC Transit has equipped 100 buses with two small, forward-facing cameras mounted on the windshields to detect traffic offenders at bus stops. When a violation is detected, the technology creates a 10-second video of the violation, a photograph of the license plate, and the time and placement of the incident. Police then review the evidence and judge whether to issue a ticket to the registered vehicle owner.
In June, AC Transit upgraded the present software on its Tempo buses to more advanced AI hardware and software designed to acknowledge lane markings, bus lanes, stop dimensions and bus sizes to make sure accurate detection of violations, officials said.
The upgrade follows 4 years of ticketing on the Tempo Line 1T corridor. During a five-week period in June and July, onboard AI cameras documented 1,102 potential parking violations for review by the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, leading to 787 tickets.
In comparison, in June and July 2023, the old system, which required manual activation of the camera, recorded 879 violations that resulted in just 22 citations.
AC Transit says it has deployed the AI-powered cameras despite privacy concerns. The transit agency says the cameras don’t record anything from contained in the buses and are aimed to focus solely on cars parked within the bus lane.
Any image that doesn’t contain evidence of a parking violation have to be destroyed inside 15 days. And images of parking violations captured by the system are destroyed inside six months of the incident unless the ticket is contested. AC Transit says the AI camera system doesn’t have facial recognition or other biometric recognition features.
Originally published:
image credit : www.mercurynews.com