Automated Camera Enforcement Expands In Contra Costa County

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — AC Transit, which provides public transportation in Contra Costa Centre, Pittsburg, Pinole, Richmond, El Sobrante, El Cerrito and San Pablo in Contra Costa County, as well as Oakland and numerous cities in Alameda County, has installed automated cameras equipped with artificial intelligence—AI—on 100 buses to detect potential bus stop violations.

The AI-powered cameras will detect and issue citations to any vehicle—including taxis, Uber, Lyft, and delivery trucks—stopped or parked at AC Transit bus stops.

During the initial 60 days, which started Aug. 7, a warning notice for violations is sent to the vehicle’s registered owner by U.S. mail.

Starting Oct. 7, warnings will be replaced with a $110 citation, which will also be issued via U.S. mail.

How Automated Enforcement Works

AC Transit has equipped 100 buses with two small forward-facing cameras mounted on the front windshield to detect potential bus stop violations.

The AI technology employs innovative computer vision developed by Bay Area-based Hayden AI to monitor bus stops for potential parking violations. Instead of sending the data to a central server, an onboard processor analyzes the information in real time.

When a violation is suspected, the system produces an evidence package, which includes:

• A 10-second video of the violation, a photo of the license plate, and the time and location of the incident.
• The evidence package is transmitted to a secure cloud accessible only by transit law enforcement.
• Trained law enforcement, and not the AI software, review the evidence packages and determine if a citation should be issued to the registered vehicle owner.

Automated Enforcement Background

AC Transit played a central role in passing Assembly Bill 917, which now permits transit agencies statewide to use forward-facing cameras to issue citations for vehicles illegally parked at bus stops and in transit-only lanes.

In June, AC Transit upgraded its legacy software on Tempo buses to more advanced AI hardware and software designed to recognize lane lines, bus lanes, bus stop dimensions, and bus sizes, ensuring accurate violation detection. This upgrade follows four years of issuing citations for station and bus-only lane violations along the Tempo Line 1T corridor.

During the activation of AI cameras June 16-July 25 along the 9.5-mile Tempo corridor, onboard AI cameras documented 1,102 potential illegal parking evidence packages for review by law enforcement, resulting in 787 citations to date.

In comparison, during June and July 2023, the legacy system, which required manual camera activation, produced 879 evidence packages, leading to 22 citations. This represents a 34.4-fold increase in citation efficiency with the AI cameras compared to the legacy system.

According to AC Transit, the actual number of motorists cited for violating the bus-only lane laws reinforced the safety imperative to expand AI-powered camera use across the bus network.

Privacy Controls and Safeguards

AC Transit has collaborated with a leading AI developer to ensure the responsible deployment of this automated camera enforcement and that the deployment closely adheres to California law:

• Cameras will not capture anything inside the bus and are angled to focus solely on cars parked in the lane.
• Any image that does not contain evidence of a parking violation must be destroyed within 15 days.
• Any image evidence of a parking violation captured by the system will be destroyed within six months of the incident unless the citation is under dispute. In such cases, the evidence will be retained until 60 days after the final resolution of the citation.
• The AI camera system has no facial recognition or other biometric detection abilities.