This morning's L.A. City Council meeting gave the final go-ahead for a long-planned automated bus lane enforcement pilot. After outreach and a 60-day warning period, the city will issue citations to people parking illegally in bus lanes. The final schedule hasn't been announced, but those actual bus lane citations are likely to start in early 2025.
Recent state legislation enabled the statewide use of automated on-bus cameras to ticket drivers parking in bus-only lanes and at bus stops. That law will sunset January 1, 2027, though if programs prove successful, new legislation could extend it.
In L.A. County, the initial bus lane enforcement program is a partnership of Metro and the L.A. City Transportation Department (LADOT). In 2023, Metro approved its portion of the program, including an $11 million five-year contract with Hayden AI. Earlier this year, Metro installed and tested on-bus cameras. But there were still a couple of issues to resolve on the city side.
The final city steps included Council approval of an ordinance, essentially setting the fines for bus lane violations (base fine is $293 which goes up to $381 and $406 with late payment).
On September 18, Council's Transportation Committee met [SBLA Tweet thread] to discuss and approve the bus lane enforcement program. Committee members were strongly in support of it, questioning how soon it could start.
State law mandates that a 60-day warning period precede actual ticketing. The committee recommendations included instructing LADOT to "begin the warning period immediately after the City Council adopts the draft Ordinance."
Metro has planned a community outreach campaign to reach motorists and transit users. That effort will get underway shortly and will be concurrent with the issuing of warning tickets.
One small point of contention in today's council discussion [SBLA Tweet thread] was on how the city would allocate anticipated ticket revenue.
Bus lane camera enforcement is expected to bring in an estimated $5 million in annual revenue. After covering expenses, Metro will receive 75 percent of revenue, with the remaining 25 percent going to the city of Los Angeles.
Councilmembers had offered two different amending motions starting to look into spending revenue on various mobility related programs (speed bumps, traffic officers, safe streets infrastructure, etc.). The council directed the spending plan decisions to be explored later by the council's Budget Committee.
(Full disclosure: Hayden AI is an advertiser with Streetsblog. Hayden AI has provided SBLA background on automated bus lane enforcement issues; they were not consulted regarding specifics included in this post. Any and all opinions herein are that of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Hayden AI.)
