Research · Evaluation · Updated Oct 6, 2026

Did bus cameras keep lanes clear? Drivers blocked them less. Buses didn’t get measurably faster.

The MTA puts cameras on buses that ticket cars blocking the bus lane, and since 2024 cars at bus stops and double-parked. When the cameras reached a street that already had a lane, buses there kept about the same speed as on streets without cameras yet. A new lane had given about 3%. The cameras did cut blocking: tickets per bus-hour fell by about two-fifths in a year. Allowing for a slow drift before the cameras, the speed gain is somewhere between nothing and about half of what a lane gave.

No step up when the cameras start

Bus speed on stretches with a bus lane, against similar stretches without cameras yet, by month before and after the cameras started. Weekdays, 6 am to 8 pm. The dashed line shows what a new lane gave, for scale.

Each month is measured against the six months before the cameras started, so those months sit near zero by design. The start month is left out.

Fewer tickets as drivers learn

Camera tickets per bus-hour on each route, by month after the cameras started, as a share of the route’s first three months.

Every way we checked

Each line is a separate comparison of streets with cameras against streets without them yet, with its 95% interval. None finds a clear gain. The largest estimates, about +1.5%, are half of what a new lane gave, and their intervals include zero.

Speed change once cameras start

    How this works

    The cameras reached routes in batches: a few in 2019–20, more in late 2022 and 2023, then dozens from September 2024 on. Each batch is compared with streets whose buses had no cameras yet, over the same months. Streets that had cameras before the comparison began never serve as the comparison.

    • StretchesThe MTA’s bus speeds between timepoint stops, by month, January 2023 to August 2026. A stretch counts as under cameras from the month camera routes cover half its path, so a local bus on a street where an SBS route has cameras counts too: the cameras ticket the cars in its way as well.
    • LanesThe main comparison uses stretches with half or more of the path on a bus lane that opened at least seven months before the cameras, and no new lane in the year after. That isolates the cameras from the paint.
    • The comparisonFor each start month, each stretch’s speed against its own average in the six months before, minus the same for stretches with no cameras yet, matched on borough (Manhattan split at 60 St), express or local, and baseline speed. Weighted by bus-miles. Effect = the average of the 12 months after.
    • Intervals95% intervals from resampling whole routes 1,000 times.
    • The checkIf camera streets were already pulling ahead or falling behind, it would show in the year before. They were slowly falling behind: months 12 to 7 before came out +1.2% against the six months just before, about 0.2 points a month. If that drift had gone on, the cameras would have had to offset it, and the gain would be +1.5% instead. The whole-route comparison has no such drift and finds no gain.
    • TicketsCamera violations by route and month (MTA), all statuses except those rejected for technical faults, per 100 bus-hours from the MTA’s route data. Routes with tickets in their first three months; the latest months are still filling in and are left out.

    Caveats: the cameras ride on some buses, not all, and only ticket when two camera buses see the same car, so a street gets far less coverage than from a fixed camera. Most lanes here already had NYPD enforcement and DOT’s fixed cameras before the bus cameras came; this measures what the bus cameras added to that. Tickets per bus-hour can fall for reasons other than learning, such as fewer camera buses on a route. Speed includes time at stops and lights. The plain estimate rules out a gain above about half a percent; allowing for the drift before the cameras, it can’t rule out one of up to 3%. These numbers say nothing about crashes or how even the service is.