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Comment by ziptron | Hacker News Reader

> pay a second company $58 million to outfit an additional 1,000 buses with mobile camera systems

How could it be $58k per bus to install a camera?

Knowing the MTA, I assume "outfit" means "provide a turnkey solution for the buses in the program, including software and staff" not just "slap a camera on a bus."

This is backed up by an earlier report on ABLE[1], which was the earlier program that this one (ACE) is built on: hardware was 1/3rd of the net cost to the MTA in that program.

[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/bus-lane-camera-r...

I imagine the actual cameras are a relatively small part of the overall price

also keep in mind this is automotive grade stuff in relatively harsh conditions (the front of a bus); it needs to be more rugged than your average camera

Surely it's just a dash cam with a button and maybe some kind of comms module. There are many mass-market dashcams with a 'record' button that saves a time period before and after pressing the button, it's pretty standard usage. The only new thing is sending the video on, and making sure the time/location are correct (many cameras do this via GPS already - standard usage). I'm not seeing what is so expensive or unique.

Very profitable by the sounds of it!!!

Some other factors to consider

* How many years of service are included (both for the data plan and just repairs when someone smashes a bus camera). Employing people to fix/replace cameras could easily cost hundreds of thousands per year

* Where does the video go? Redundant storage in geographically disparate areas?

* How long is video retained?

* R&D costs?

* Does the price include manual human review?

* There was also some drama where the 2 vendors sued each other, idk if that has any impact on the prices

* The tickets during the pilot made millions of dollars per year, do the cameras pay for themselves?

* How much efficiency are they gaining if the program results in fewer blocked busses?

A bus goes through many more miles and hours of operation than the vast majority of cars. Most cars are parked for the vast majority of the day, and sometimes in covered garages.

And how long do those cameras last? The feds only fund bus replacements at twelve years or 500,000 miles.

Unlike most other parts of the bus, this part isn't mission-critical and presumably is easy to replace. It doesn't need to be made to the same durability standard as, say, the engine.

I have doubts this is actually that profitable. More likely the company is rolling their labor overhead into the per-camera pricing. It's a small order too, only 1000 cameras.

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