For TTC passengers who ride streetcars in corridors where there is mixed traffic and illegal passing by vehicles occurs, officials say a new pilot project involving cameras assisted by artificial intelligence will hopefully arm them with data to make the case for new enforcement capabilities.Starting on Monday, the TTC embarked on a nine-month pilot project involving four streetcars used on the 501 Queen, 504 King, 505 Dundas, 506 Carlton and 511 Bathurst routes that are outfitted with specialized cameras.Gatekeeper Systems, a company based in British Columbia that focuses on video systems for transit and school bus networks, was awarded a $460,000 contract by the TTC to retrofit the streetcars with devices that could eventually be used for automated enforcement.Doug Dyment, the company’s president and CEO, said if a vehicle stops in a streetcar’s “violation zone” while it is stopped, the system will capture all of the “evidence,” store it on a device and upload it to the company’s system. He said the vehicle’s licence plate can then be matched with the vehicle’s owner and a ticket could potentially be issued.“If you don’t have AI to identify when a vehicle is in a ‘money shot,’ then you have to have … video analysts going through mounds and mounds of video, hours and hours of video, to find the incidents,” he told CityNews Monday afternoon.“We save the TTC hundreds or thousands of hours going through video to find the incidents; we do it automatically for them.”Related:TTC to test cameras that catch drivers illegally passing streetcarsDyment said the flagged evidence can be reviewed by enforcement authorities, after which a ticket can be processed.He said the TTC is the first major transit operator in Canada with the framework for going ahead with this type of automated video enforcement. Dyment said New York’s MTA, specifically the Long Island Rail Road, recently awarded his company a contract for a video system.Under the Ontario Highway Traffic Act, it is illegal to pass a streetcar at a stop with its doors open for passengers to board or disembark. If convicted, a person can receive a $183 fine and three demerit points. However, the law doesn’t permit tickets to be issued by automated enforcement systems. Currently, authorities can ultimately only warn vehicle owners.TTC CEO Mandeep Lali said the current initiative is “all about safety” and is a “proof of concept.” He said it allows the agency to assess whether there are benefits of using the technology, calling it “a safety camera” system.“We have to prove the methodology, prove what the results give us and then see how we extrapolate it out,” Lali said.“As we go through the trial, we get more familiar with what we can do, what we can’t do, the limitations … and how we take that forward.”Lali and officials said there have been 141 instances where streetcar riders have been struck by passing vehicles between 2014 and 2024.He said TTC staff will be reviewing the data monthly throughout the pilot project period. A full report will go to the agency’s board of directors, and a decision could be made to scrap the technology or potentially expand it.“How do we get to zero? How do we ensure no customers are hurt, there are no near misses?”During an unrelated news conference, CityNews asked Mayor Olivia Chow about the matter. She said she is supportive of the pilot project.“We need to keep everyone safe on our roads, including transit riders. You’re just about to step off the streetcar and boom, there’s a car that ran right by you and had you not looked you probably could have been hit. We need to stop those illegal activities,” she said.“We’re not giving tickets yet but be warned, we’re looking at you. We know who you are hopefully soon.”Chow said if the municipal staff get permission from the Ontario government, they would potentially move to issue tickets. TTC staff noted the Ford government made changes to the Highway Traffic Act to allow for camera enforcement in 2022, but permission to issue fine hasn’t been granted. The provincial government previously allowed speed cameras to be used by municipalities, but a few years later the government scrapped the ability to do so.