Second Ave. Sagas

Bus cam legislation clears Gantt’s transportation committee

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Benjamin Kabak

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A watered-down version — but a version nonetheless — of legislation granting New York City the ability to use cameras to enforce bus lanes has passed the New York State Assembly transportation committee, and transit advocates, as Streetsblog explains, couldn’t be happier. The bill itself has a long way to go before becoming law; it has to pass the Codes and Rules Committees and then suffer through full votes in both the Assembly and State Senate. However, as Ben Fried notes, considering how David Gantt, chair of the transportation committee, has killed similar measures in committee before, it appears as though Sheldon Silver is finally willing to allow the Assembly to pass this legislation.

On the surface, then, this development is a positive one. After all, if bus lanes aren’t going to be physically separated, the city needs some sort of effective enforcement technique. The bill, however, isn’t very strong. It allows for only limited use of cameras. While the photo devices can be fixed-location devices, mobile units or bus-mounted cameras, the entire camera enforcement program can “cover no more than 50 miles of bus lanes and operate only on weekdays from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.” The MTA and DOT plan to roll out far more than 50 miles of bus rapid transit lanes over the next few years, and these limitations are disappointingly short-sighted for a change.

Comments

6 responses to “Bus cam legislation clears Gantt’s transportation committee”

  1. E. Aron

    I’m curious as to what the counter argument is to the cameras. A linked article mentioned something about civil liberties. Perhaps it’s my appreciation for transit that can’t even imagine a civil liberties argument against more efficient bus transit?

    Reply
  2. AK

    The civil liberties argument is really about what happens with the massive amount of information collected by cameras than it is about any transit-related concern. For instance, here are some questions that need to be answered about the camera system (either for bus lanes or tolls):

    How long is the footage stored? Where? Who has access to it? For what purposes may the footage by used? Are the cameras specifically calibrated to see license plates, or are they generally able to give a wider picture of surrounding activity on the street (in which case, the cameras could be used for a broad array of police surveillance activity).

    Also, while the constitutionality of “tracking” permits police to follow you in a car (you are on public roads, after all), electronic tracking (which is what cameras COULD enable) is NOT permissible under New York State Constitutional law. Indeed, earlier this year, the State’s highest court held that attaching a GPS device to a car was an unconstituional search/seizure, even though the police COULD HAVE followed the car legally on the streets.

    Presumably, NYC would like to have cameras on most avenues and many cross-streets. It isn’t inconceivable that such cameras COULD be used by NYPD to track suspicious persons (or any person).

    Those are the civil liberties concerns in a nutshell. Again, the concerns do not vitiate the enormous public policy potential cameras hold, they merely flag potentially impermissible uses of the footage which demand attention before the cameras are put in place.

    Reply
    1. E. Aron

      Thanks for that, the argument makes some sense. But balancing the interests, the cameras seem to take the cake and it’s not a close race.

      Reply
      1. AK

        Well, the argument of civil liberties folks is that you can have your cake and eat it too– have the cameras, just make sure there are robust protections for privacy/use.

        Reply
        1. Red

          Streetsblog has reported that the NY Civil Liberties Union helped draft the language in the bus camera bill in 2008 and the bill had that organization’s tacit, though not explicit, approval. (This did not stop politicians who opposed the bill from citing privacy concerns anyway.)

          I’m not sure whether the privacy language is similar in this year’s bill. From my understanding, the critical provisions were, like AK mentioned, how the cameras are positioned, how long the footage is stored for, and what it can be used for.

          Reply
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