Bus Lane Blocked, He Trained His Computer to Catch Scofflaws

I can kinda understand why he wasn't happy. Your initial phrasing was very hostile. I am not sure what he would have said if you had phrased your question more neutrally, but your tone definitely gave him the opportunity to partially ignore your (totally valid!) concerns.

I’m working on this problem now on the UK with a very similiar solution. Let’s get in touch?

Given I’m no fan of red light cameras already, your idea of 24/7 automated city wide traffic enforcement sounds dystopic and ripe for abuse through ever more granular infractions and escalating penalties.

I’d rather cyclists continue to be annoyed than everyone suffer under that.

Good on you. If the mayor can't enforce his own bus lanes, then they're no use and might as well be removed. Just let people park there! If the bus riders complain, tell them the truth - they can't afford to police them and/or the state won't allow cameras.

So are you also OK with Camera Traffic Cops catching biking scoflaws who don't stop at lights, go the wrong way on one way streets, ride at dangerous speeds etc?

> NYPD officers behind a computer screen who could review the footage and issue the ticket

Nobody wants this. The people won't want it. The courts won't want to deal with the all the people fighting the tickets out of spite, the police won't want to be essentially call center jockeys. Also, disconnecting the offense with the punishment is a sure way to make your enforcement system ineffective -- people will just treat it as an occasional NYCFU tax.

> But I also think that the current methods of enforcement...

You do understand that laws which are selectively enforced against the marginalized shouldn't be laws, right? It's terrible how our institutions treat them, and your solution is to treat everyone like them?

> Firstly, the camera systems should blur all faces onboard the camera before transmitting to the internet.

Anything less than 100% accuracy will never work. It's easy to brush off small error rates when you're designing the system. Not so much when every mistake is used against you by groups trying to take the cameras down. Plus people are identifiable by far more than just their face. A project at my alma mater could clock people by just their walking cadence.

> Yes, but these people could already go down and view the street

Not even the courts agree with you on that. Just because a passerby could look through my front windows doesn't mean it's not stalking if you do it 24/7. Just because someone could see me in public doesn't mean the police don't need a warrant if they want to tail me 24/7.

> People who speed and go through red lights hate those cameras.

Everyone hates those cameras. They lasted less than a year in my city.

* They reverse the presumption of innocence since the ticketed person winds up with the burden of proving that state is in error. The obvious situation being that they weren't the one driving the car.

* They were sold to the people as a safety implement and as a cash grab to municipalities.

* They didn't make the roads any safer since almost all instances of running red lights was accidental and people actually went faster on the roads to make up for the slowdown due to the cameras.

* Nobody likes being constantly watched. Especially if it's public you can glean a ton of personal information about people with 24/7 footage like this.

You're trying really hard to make fetch happen. If more than half the time the bike lane is blocked by cars then it would probably be better off as a vehicle stopping lane. It would probably free up the bus stop too. I guarantee that more people are hailing rides than riding bikes.

Great research, I wish you luck!

One of the things the mayor said interested me:

> If someone's blocking [a bike lane] for thirty seconds while they get their groceries or drop their kid off, I don't think they should get a ticket for that.

Do you agree? And do you have any data on how much of the blocking going on is A) the "thirty second dropoff", B) driving in the lane, and C) stopping and parking for any period of time?

Lastly, I'll add that as a walker in NYC (no car, no bike), I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. I rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all, and have frequently come 1-2 feed away from being side-swiped while a bicycle blows through a red light. Since you're so passionate about this I'm sure you follow traffic laws, but maybe you'll be inspired to take a look at bike behavior too!

This is awesome work, and a great example of the kinds of civic analysis and action developers can take to make their cities and communities better, or at least more informed of the reality they operate within.

Also, wanted to applaud and state that I wholeheartedly agree with your recommendations for both installing cameras everywhere for this purpose, but also for advocating for the faces to be blurred and for the data to be available to the public. As I see it, the surveillance state is here to stay, and thus our efforts are better geared towards pushing for equiveillance rather than fighting against inevitable surveillance: https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/isdyahoofellow/david-br...

While I respect that this sucks for bikers, I gotta side with the Mayor on this one.

There is a limited budget for enforcement, and it makes sense to focus that enforcement on crimes that cause loss of life or serious harm first.

And frankly, the economy of NYC would come to a screeching halt if people couldn't double park to make quick stops. The cost of delivering anything would go up significantly to account for the cost of parking and time spent circling for legal parking at every drop-off, or the cost of all the fines.

Also, you probably should have started with, "And I understand some of this is a state issue, but can you clarify which parts are a state issue and which parts are things NYC could do?". That would have been a lot better than "And don't tell me it's a state issue!!"

What do you think the difficulty of doing this for people running stop signs would be? Seems like a different problem as multiple frames would need to be considered.

Don't know anything about the mayor but what he said seems reasonable to me. As a cyclist myself I have no problem merging into traffic if my lane is blocked, my experience though is most cyclists don't like to stop so end up cutting into the live lane putting themselves at risk.

Disclosure: not American don't know the rules there.

I love that Bill DeBlasio derides car culture on the call while taking a car every damned day from City Hall to his gym in Park Slope.

Politicians...

I think the movement to radically improve our streets needs to be clear about what an end-goal that will work for all parties looks like.

To my mind, the only tenable solution is bifurcation: vehicle traffic over here, everything that is not vehicle traffic over here. Further division within those buckets will be necessary and often contentious, but it's the initial, physical separation of motorized vehicles of a certain class (buses, trucks, cars, motorcycles) and everything else on the road (electric single-person devices, bikes, etc.) that will prove the most impactful and crucial to a changed transportation landscape.

I see that happening in my lifetime, but I'm not holding my breath. In terms of political difficulty, making life difficult for Americans in their cars is right up there with controlling their access to guns.

As another commenter has correctly pointed out, the streets and regulations are basically working the way they were engineered to work: for the benefit of cars and drivers. We need to change that but we need to be transparent about that being the goal. Ticketing people cannot be the goal and it will not have the desired effect - it will just trigger a backlash.

What I love about this story is that it represents a tipping point: it's no longer safe to assume that the person on a bike is socio-economically or politically disadvantaged in relation to the person behind the wheel of their Lexus or Mercedes.

Maybe. But instead of dedicated points. Why not just have a market set the price of parking. So no free parking. And the price of parking is set so that we are at 75% capacity by day/hour or something like that. So that way there are always spots available and everyone pays their due.

I agree that cities need to allocate street space for very short term parking for deliveries, cab/ubers, etc. We shouldn't be forcing drivers to break the law to do things that are part of the normal routine of the city and endanger pedestrians and bikers. Every metro city should be planning for all types of traffic.

Bus lanes and stops are actually empty a lot of the time, they just need to be clear at the particular moment when the bus needs them.

With real-time tracking of bus and delivery vehicle locations, I wonder if it would be feasible to work out a software solution that allows delivery vehicles official, coordinated access to the unused time slices. Much like an automated version of what air traffic controllers do for runways and taxiways.

So for example, when a UPS truck enters a neighborhood where it needs needs to deliver 3 packages, the UPS routing software could query the transit agency software telling it the 3 locations, and it could respond with time ranges that they're available. Bus #123 will be at stop #456 at 2:33pm, and that stop won't be needed by another bus until 2:44pm, so we can reserve the time slot 2:35pm-2:42pm for you to make your delivery.

Seattle has more than a few 3-minute loading parking zones around neighborhoods. They're usually placed to be convenient for wheelchairs, walkers, dollys, hand trucks, and carts; but aren't restricted to any group. And unlike most other street parking, most of these spots don't swap to free at 8pm, instead staying loading zones 24/7.

Enforcement is the same as any other priority parking spot - if the police find your unattended car, they'll ticket and tow.

And most people seem pretty honest about it. It's easier to park somewhere else if you're eating or working in your car. And less risky (cheaper) to park in a garage if you'll be a while.

>"So the solution is simple: Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s"

The parking lane has already been pushed out to make room for a dedicated biking lane. Proposing another dedicated lane on top of this is not a "simple" solution.

> Create a dedicated package delivery/cab pickup/dropoff lane for those vehicle that clearly need to stop frequently but for short times. /s

I'm not sure why you have to be sarcastic saying this? Toronto is experimenting with this idea by stripping parking spots on some of the most high traffic routes... and exchanging it for taxi/delivery/bike/pedestrian spaces/wider streetcar pick up spots...

It's a real problem that isn't going away. Delivery is getting more and more popular every month throughout North America, not only for traditional ecommerce but also groceries and fast food. Same with 'fleet-based' car systems such as Uber/Lyft (which are better for cities/the environment than owning cars) which will be massively increasing in scale with self-driving cars.

So, why shouldn't we design infrastructure for them as much as bikes?

I not sure why the promotion of bike (lanes) has to always be at the detriment of high demand short-term parking. If anything the only long-term losers should be private car spots, but only because other means have reached higher demand and utility.

But even then that's not exactly an unsolvable problem either absent restrictive municipal policy and that prevent the development of underground parking.

Convert all bus stop areas into 3-minute loading zones? Charge a fee when taxis / ridesharing / delivery providers want to use them, then use that for a transit fund.

True. But do we want humans doing the enforcement? How many humans would you need? What about night? What about equality of enforcement?

I touch on some of the issues https://hackernoon.com/cameras-as-traffic-cops-99a85513e1e0 I am unsure.

When I was in LA, I noticed that they had about 3 three different types of buses and their short/minibuses were everywhere.

The actual solution is to separate the layers.

Top: Human scale movement (pedestrians, non-motorized and 'very' small motor (1 HP per human mass being moved) personal transport devices (think wheel chairs and maybe slow-speed scooters/electrically assisted bikes).

Mid (down): delivery / private vehicle / emergency services.

Lower: Bulk public transit (subways and the like).

While we're at it, put parks and recreation areas in the middle of the human level of traffic. Maybe storefronts along the sides.

The solution is to turn parking spots into loading zones.

I think you have some good points in there. I agree that in general i dont like the idea of enforcement as the best solution. Rather good civic planning can make many of these problems go away.

I certainly am physically able to ride around cars etc. But if we want the cities of america to evolve in terms of density etc then we need infrastructure designed so that a grandma on a tricycle feels comfortable enough riding to the store instead of taking a taxi. Its certainly done in other countries.

From past experiences with different European cities, I'd guess this may be a case of an old city being forced to adapt to motorized traffic.

I've lived all my life in young cities, where most of the infrastructure seems to have been designed in the 50's or thereafter. Also almost ridiculously strict regulations about how much space a given type of road requires. Generally speaking, there's very little trouble of the sort being discussed here, but you do get people complaining about delivery trucks parking in the bike lanes - in areas built in the 20's.

At the other extreme, go to old towns in a place like Croatia, and there are no bike lanes - delivery trucks park by just stopping in traffic. As far as I could tell, it was just a fact of life.

The point being, I suspect this is a result of trying to cram too much traffic into too small a space, and not being willing to accept the consequences.

It's very hard to change n old city to suit motorized traffic. After a while, I actually felt more comfortable driving in Croatia than I do in my nordic home town, because everyone seemed to have adapted to the suboptimal roads in towns by being very careful.

I don’t think this is even a bike-specific thing. It’s common for busses and delivery vehicles to block travel lanes for cars too. Not all streets have places for them to stop out of the way of traffic, so they just stop in a lane and you have to go around.

Space is limited. Going around a stopped vehicle is a lot easier on a bike than in a car in many cases. Maybe cyclists should just deal with it the way drivers do.

The reality is that there are plenty of places around the world that have transitioned from car-centric to mass-transit centric / self-propulsion-centric cities. Deliveries can happen with bikes and for larger things trucks can use side street. Really, only the elderly or disabled really need to get dropped off right at the door. Others should get fined for blocking traffic. Once you've been to a nice city and you see it all work out like the bike optimists talk of it working you see that they're right about most of it. The only thing I think they get a little wrong is that some of them over-estimate the speed they think they'll be able to bike. Good cities tend to have way more cyclists and this is safer, but slower. Don't get me wrong, I'm a speed demon with my bike, but I'd take a European city over an American one any day of the week.

You are basically saying it's ok to park in bicyclist lanes, for some of us that leads to big problems. I choose bicycle lanes because I need them, me and people with cargo bikes, handicaps, kids or just fear of cars.

I agree we need better planning but we still need more tickets, there have to be some consequences for endangering other people.

Cyclist here. Where are people supposed to park? Seems pretty obvious to me: legal parking spots.

Having talked to dozens of people parked in the bike lane over the years, it's obvious to me that the vast majority park in the bike lane out of convenience, not necessity. I usually recommend legal spots to park that are nearby, but many drivers are unwilling to walk even an extra 50 feet. People have acted as if my request to park somewhere else was completely unreasonable. (Edited.)

So while sometimes I get this argument, it does not work most of the time. Drivers block the bike lane mostly for convenience, not by necessity.

(My experience comes from living in Austin, Baltimore, and the DC metro area. I suspect NYC is different, but probably not that much different from Baltimore.)

Cars should only block car lanes, it's not complicated.

get your car door kicked when trying to make a right turn

So you're saying you made a right turn in front of a cyclist close enough for them to touch your car with their foot?

I've been a part of a few of those critical mass protests, at first glance it appears like a good thing to participate in - increasing awareness of cycling as an option to people that might not be familiar with it.

But the combative mindset that seems to be a core part of the tradition only seemed to polarize people and actually put us further back from our (supposed) goal of increasing accessible cycling infrastructure. At the last one I was almost embarrassed to be there. And some people do legitimately need to get somewhere on time, to take liberties with that is unnecessarily off-putting.

I now think it's much more about feeling like you're part of an in-group, a persecuted and rebellious one at that. I'm now much more a fan of the (boring?) folks calmly working for greater cycling access, and having much more success at it.

>Where are taxis, ride-sharing vehicles, and delivery trucks supposed to stop?

taxis, ride-sharing vehicles, and delivery trucks should stop in the car lane. if that's not acceptable, roads should be designed with a designated stopping lane. The majority of the lanes on the road are already dedicated to private motor vehicles, and there's only one bus or bike lane. They shouldn't block a different (and more efficient) mode of transportation that has less road space dedicated to it when they want to stop.

If there isn't a bus lane or bike lane, that's what they do. Why does it suddenly becomes unacceptable to block a private vehicle lane just because there is a bus lane you could block instead?

Why would you spend all that money to make Bus and Bike lanes that are useless? And why are bike/bus lanes supposed to cover this lack of planning?

Figuring out where the taxis and cops are supposed to stop should've been done before any of this was implemented. For them to just say "we don't have room, so we'll take yours" is disrespectful and clearly causing a major traffic issue. So to answer your question of where cops and taxis are "supposed to stop" the answer is "anywhere else that's legal", and not just assume that bus riders should eat their time cost for being lazy.

> or get your car door kicked when trying to make a right turn in the city

How about you pay attention instead of nearly running someone over? You could kill someone doing that.

Hfahahahah

Thank you for posting that link - as I was reading the article, that picture was the first thing that caught my eye and I couldn't figure out what he was riding!

Wow, he figured out how to miniaturize a penny-farthing and add gearing to boot.

I want to try that. I doubt I'd replace my road bike, but I want to know what that's like to ride.

Yes, protect lanes for buses and bikes etc is the best solution. Hopefully this research adds emphasis on why those are important.

Those bollards take up space, and we’re already dealing with what are in some cases very old and narrow roads.

Bollards in the middle of the road are dangerous. The solution is to segregate the bike lane by putting it on the right of the parked cars, next to the pedestrians. This means that cyclists will cross together with the pedestrians and that left turns require two lights, but these can be programmed so that the waiting time is minimized (OTOH, cyclists have no lights for turning right).

I've seen this not work. Places where people want to park generally have driveways or street corners where the grade separation needs a break and drivers will use this break to get into the bike lane.

Seems a little violent.

I have a relative who used to drive a bus in brussels and would “nudge” cars out of the way if they were only partially blocking his path. The bus was none the worse for wear, and the cars he didn’t care about.

The concrete jungle is only a dystopia to those who are constantly in a whirlwind of inconvenience and don't have enough money to throw at it.

If you're rich you cover the inconveniences with nice condos, taking cabs, and eating out.

Speed limits are a ceiling not a floor.

The speed limit in NYC is 25, and traffic in manhattan averages 8mph. I can tell you from personal experience that I will pass most cars in manhattan unless I'm riding on an avenue that has rolling greens, and I'm just a recreational rider.

Definitely. Where are you from? If you go to Tokyo you will be astonished by the unlocked bicycles, clean streets, parking, etc. Its possible. You just have to design the city so that those actions are the default. And educate people. And educate some more. And yell.

It's not an American thing, it's mostly just an NYC, and maybe Boston, Philly, DC thing.

The parking/driving thing, not the recycling one.

I took a video of traffic flow on a NYC avenue: https://youtu.be/RXIyzdLl3vk

I wanted to see whether the lights were being used effectively to let the motor-vehicle traffic flow without stopping, and what potential causes for slowdowns are.

On the one hand yes, a double parked truck which restricts the avenue to two lanes, does cause a build up: more flow is coming in than going out. But then there are some less obvious things: cars changing lanes, cars taking a right turn having to wait for pedestrians, and delinquent pedestrians.

Many of the bike lanes in NYC are nothing but a stripe of paint along the side of a single-lane road, whose curbs are lined with parked cars. Cars double-parking for loading, etc will inevitably either block the bike lane or block the auto lane, causing cars to swerve into the bike lane.

eg, https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7784195,-73.9470116,3a,75y,2...

in that case wouldnt the bus would necessarily need to cross traffic to get to and from a stop? and traffic would have to cross the bus lane to make turns?

If you are a UPS driver in NYC what are your other options?

This is a systemic issue, not some "bad apples". You won't fix it by naming and shaming the pawns.

I tried suing UPS directly. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20151002/central-harlem/har... its still ongoing. There are over 1000 UPS trucks on NYC streets so the shaming force would have to be huge.

The great thing, though, is that you don't have to _personally use_ the dedicated bus and bike infrastructure in order to benefit from it. By making these modes more comfortable and efficient, others (like those who don't need to wear to suits to meetings) are able to choose them, getting their cars off the road and leaving more room for yours.

None of those things you want will happen in Manhattan anyway. So you're creating a straw man.

Your personal preferences are understandable, but they should not be the basis for public policy. Most households in New York do not even own a car. Using a 200 hp machine to move one 70 kg person is extremely wasteful. Not to mention the death toll (>1000 persons/year in NY) and the disproportionate amount of public property reserved for motor traffic and parking.

Are you arguing that the ensuring the comfort of some car owners is the best use of public resources?

You are right that the bicycle community does itself no favors with some of our behavior. We are working on it. I think the bigger issue I raised was about the Busses.

If you think it's a problem then go ahead and do it. It's a non sequitur here though.

This does a better job of explaining why your attitude is incorrect than I would...

https://www.wired.com/2014/11/9-things-drivers-need-stop-say...