M15 buses will help city enforce bus lane ban
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
Starting next month, the MTA
and New York City will be more
‘ABLE’ to make drivers pay fi nes
for getting in the way of their buses on
Manhattan’s M15 route.
The MTA announced on Sept. 23
that all 51 buses on the M15 Select
Bus Service route will be equipped
with the Automated Bus Lane Enforcement
(ABLE) system beginning
on Oct. 7. The buses will be fitted with
camera systems designed to capture
license plate information of all vehicles
obstructing bus lanes along the
route, which primarily uses First and
Second Avenues.
Simply put, if you’re driving or
stopped in a bus lane and an M15
bus goes by, the bus’s camera system
will capture timestamped images of
the offense. Soon after, you’ll get a
ticket from the city’s Department of
Finance notifying you of the violation
and a $50 fine.
“Automated bus lane enforcement
is a critical part of our plan to increase
bus speeds, because transit
priority improvements do not work
if motorists do not respect their
purpose or abide by traffic laws,”
MTA New York City Transit President
Photo via Wikimedia Commons/MTA
Buses running on the M15 Select Bus Service line in Manhattan will
soon be equipped with cameras to catch drivers who illegally block
bus lanes.
Andy Byford said. “We need to
give our buses every fighting chance
to get through the city’s congested
streets.”
The ABLE program will be
launched with a 60-day grace period,
meaning that any driver caught
for a bus lane infraction between
Oct. 7 and Dec. 7 will receive a
written warning. Once the grace period
ends, motorists who block the
bus lanes will be subject to a fine
of $50 per violation, and a $25 late
fee if they fail to pay the fine in a
timely manner.
Drivers who make legal turns from
bus lanes, however, should not have
to worry. The MTA indicated that
the ABLE system will collect “multiple
pieces of evidence to ensure
that vehicles making permitted turns
from bus lanes are not ticketed.”
“For years, we have had overhead
cameras along routes like the M15,
but adding enforcement cameras to
the buses themselves will now help
us further keep bus lanes clear — allowing
tens of thousands of commuters
to keep moving,” city Transportation
Commissioner Polly Trottenberg
added. “And we know that improvement
in bus travel times consistently
lead to ridership increases.”
As noted, the ABLE system is part
of the Better Buses Action Plan that
the de Blasio administration launched
earlier this year to speed up bus service.
Trottenberg said the plan’s goal
is to achieve a 25 percent increase
in average citywide bus speed by the
end of 2020.
The MTA plans to expand the ABLE
system in November to include the
M14 bus route along 14th Street, but
that’s dependent upon ongoing litigation
regarding the fate of the proposed
M14 busway.
8 September 26, 2019 TVG Schneps Media