KENILWORTH, N.J. — If you're the kind of driver who parks in the bus lane to run a quick errand, you might want to think twice.
The nation's biggest transit systems are using AI-enhanced cameras to keep bus lanes clear of illegally parked cars.
The company behind those cameras is a start-up called Hayden AI, which offered to demonstrate how they work in real life on the streets near its offices in this New Jersey suburb.
"What you're seeing on the screen right now is the system identifying different objects as we're driving down the road," said Charley Territo, the chief growth officer for Hayden AI, as we rode in the back of a specially equipped van.
The cameras are mounted inside the front windshield, where they can take in everything that's happening in front of the bus. The system analyzes those images to decide if it's looking at a vehicle, Territo says — and whether that vehicle is stopped somewhere it shouldn't be.
In just three years, Hayden AI has launched services with transit agencies in New York, Washington, D.C., Oakland, Calif., and Los Angeles. The company is deploying pilot programs in Seattle and Denver, and it's talking with other cities, including Philadelphia and Chicago.
The camera systems are using AI to help transit agencies catch and fine drivers who illegally block bus lanes and bus stops. But Territo says that's not the ultimate goal.
"When you look at the reason for enforcement, it's really not to write tickets. It's to change driver behavior," Territo said in an interview. "And what we're seeing is a reduction in the number of repeat offenders."
There's some evidence that these camera systems are helping buses move faster, though their rollout has hit a few speed bumps.
"It's working brilliantly," said Richard Davey, the former president of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in an interview last year. "It's changing behavior, which is what we want. And it's speeding up our buses."
The MTA operates the subways and buses in New York City, where its buses carry more than two million each day. And Davey says the riders complain about how slowly the buses move.
"We ask our customers, what is preventing them from using our services more? What's sort of irritating them?" Davey said.
"Our bus customers have told us that bus reliability, wait times, traffic, those are their three biggest issues," he said. "So I'm sure some motorist somewhere will be unhappy that we're doing this. But I can assure you that there are 2 million bus customers who will be happy."
Transit advocates say slow service is a big reason why fewer people ride the bus in the U.S. than in other countries. The MTA says its buses are 5% faster on the routes where it's been using the cameras, and they have been involved in 20% fewer collisions. So the agency moved to expand the program this year to 20 new bus routes and 1,000 more buses earlier this year.
But that expansion did not go quite as planned, as hundreds of drivers received erroneous tickets.
"It wasn't anything too worrisome at first, because you realize that you're parked in a legal spot," said George Han, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Han says he's careful about only parking in legal spots, so he was surprised when the tickets started arriving in the mail — including three in a single day — and kept coming.
"I think we're up to about a dozen or so. There were definitely over 10," Han said, costing hundreds of dollars in total.
Han knew these tickets were issued in error. At first, he tried to fight them in court. But that wasn't working very well. So Han went public, and local TV station WNBC picked up the story. After that, Han finally received a flurry of letters apologizing for the tickets.
The MTA says about 800 tickets were mistakenly issued because of a "programming error" by Hayden AI. In addition, the MTA says about 3,000 tickets were accidentally issued during what should have been a 60-day warning period for the bus lane enforcement zones.
"Normally the 60-day warning period serves as a shakeout phase during which such glitches are identified and fixed," MTA spokesman Eugene Resnick said in a statement. "All violations issued in error during what was intended to be a warning period have been or are being voided. Any payments made on improperly issued tickets are being refunded."
Hayden AI says those programming errors have been fixed.
"Anytime there's a large program, there are going to be bumps along the road," said Hayden's Charley Territo. The problems in New York "had nothing to do with the AI or the technology. It was really a configuration issue."
There's supposed to be an additional level of human review, where someone from the NYC Department of Transportation looks at each video of an alleged violation before deciding whether to issue a ticket.
The DOT declined to comment on why those human reviewers did not catch hundreds of erroneous tickets for cars that were legally parked.
George Han says he supports the program's goal of keeping bus lanes clear. Still, he says the incident raises bigger questions about AI. Han, a dermatologist, says there's a lot of conversation in medicine about how and when to use AI — and a healthy dose of skepticism.
"In medicine, we're trained to be a little pessimistic about new technologies before we really think they're ready because we don't want to harm our patients," Han said. "Maybe you could argue, yes, the stakes are lower. These are some parking tickets. It all worked out in the end. But, you know, our city is spending all this money. There should be some level of accountability for these programs."
Copyright 2025 NPR
