Gavin Newsom is definitely not the kind of mayor who boringly keeps the old musty status quo chugging along. He's got some fresh, cutting-edge ideas. His idea to generate electricity by building massive wave engines beneath the Golden Gate Bridge is an example of just how cutting-edge they are.
When it comes to MUNI (or SFMTA as they are now hoping to be known) the mayor is being no less creative. He wants to mount automated cameras on city buses that will send $100 fines to the owners of vehicles that park or stop in bus stop zones and bus-only lanes.
$100 citation will be mailed out to the car's owner
Fiona Ma, former SF Supervisor recently elected to the California State Assembly, has introduced AB 101 which would enable automated bus ticketing, but only in San Francisco. AB 101 amends parking laws to allow a ticket to be mailed to a vehicle's registered owner up to fifteen days after the date of the offense. It's pretty hard for anyone to mount much of a defense when the camera has caught them red-handed. Most of those kinds of tickets stick.
But the Constitution says, "not so fast"
Article IV, Section 16 of the California Constitution prohibits the legislature from passing special laws for local jurisdictions. Ma's legislation declares San Francisco's bus lane problem unique to the state because of the density of the city, the congestion caused by weekday swelling of the city's population as tens of thousands commute, and because of the City's unusually narrow streets, steep hills and and blind intersections.
I wonder if there is a way we can also get those cameras to snap a picture of the driver every time a MUNI bus slowly wanders through a red light.
On second thought, forget it. They would run out of film too fast.
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