Machine learning to estimate when bus and bike lanes blocked

Frustrated with vehicles blocking bus and bike lanes, Alex Bell applied some statistical methods to estimate the extent.

Sarah Maslin Nir for The New York Times:

Now Mr. Bell is trying another tack — the 30-year-old computer scientist who lives in Harlem has created a prototype of a machine-learning algorithm that studies footage from a traffic camera and tracks precisely how often bike lanes are obstructed by delivery trucks, parked cars and waiting cabs, among other scofflaws. It is a piece of data that transportation advocates said is missing in the largely anecdotal discussion of how well the city’s bus and bike lanes do or do not work.