Bus-Only Bus Lane Enforcement

That’s not how traffic rules work, and for good reason. You can’t predict whether you’ll become part of a queue at the next traffic light, or whether a bus will come up behind that queue. In addition, a camera on a bus might only be able to see the license plate on the last car in the queue, when cars in front are equally culpable.

I think the camera bill is a bad idea for several reasons.

The bus lane implementations around here were done really badly. Many of them created traffic jams that didn’t use to exist. Before the bus lane, there was no delay for the bus.

In addition, the scheduled service in many of these lanes is so sparse that even if every bus were crush loaded, the bus lane could carry a fraction as many people as a lane full of single-occupant cars. A real bus lane like the one approaching the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey serves more than a hundred thousand people every morning.

The bus lanes around here are often marked really badly, with very few signs in a very small font, and pavement markings that aren’t maintained as they fade or the road is patched.

And some of the bus lanes don’t even have any buses using them! The city and state striped a lot of bus lanes for the October 2022 Orange Line shuttle, but didn’t bother to remove them. Why should people get camera tickets when the people making the rules are this sloppy?

Note also you just recreated the classic deontology vs utilitarianism tradeoff.

It's "it's good to obey rules because obeying rules is itself a virtue" vs "it's good to take the actions that will have the best projected consequences".

Obviously in a physical finite universe, utilitarianism is correct*.  And rationality is a close cousin of it.

However, in a society of government and laws, deontology is much more convenient.  Easier for individuals to obey, easier to enforce.  This is why, for instance, you aren't allowed to ignore stop signs and red lights at night when there is no traffic.

*when you have data about the given situation of sufficient quality, and correct algorithms to process it.  Example, the actions taken by an aircraft stability control system vs a set of written "laws of how to fly a plane by the Senate Committee on Aviation".  

I am a fan of combined bus + bike + right turn lanes. But I say this as a bicyclist and motorist, not a bus user.

The benefit to bicyclists is that we get a real full-width lane to bike in the center of, without much traffic. This provides generous distance from debris on the right, and from traffic in the lane to the left, as well as optimal sight lines to and from traffic at intersections. And bus drivers are more courteous, attentive, and law-abiding than the average motorist. I have never had a problem using the full lane ahead of a bus.

However, after reading your post I have a new appreciation for how much that could slow down buses, depending on how common bicyclists are. Of course buses can change lanes to pass just like everyone else, and buses in a bus lane have to change lanes to make left turns anyway, but in heavy traffic it would reduce some of the benefit to buses of having a special bus lane.

Photo enforcement of traffic regulations (not even laws) is pretty close to pure evil. Both red light and speed cameras in all cases I'm aware of are purely measured on revenue, not behavioral or safety benefits.  The feedback loop (no visible enforcement) is broken - it's not showing anyone that it's important, it's just collecting money.

Because it's a court-complicit loophole that makes it a non-personal-violation (so there's no right to trial), it's pretty close to true the standard objection that "for the rich, it's a fee not a fine", but even worse because it's trivial to challenge, so anyone with enough motivation to lie can get out of it.