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    New Yorker applied machine learning to blocked bike lane problem

    by 
    Mallory Locklear
    Mallory Locklear
    03.16.2018

    Alex Bell likes to bike around New York City, but he got fed up with how often bike lanes were blocked by delivery trucks and idling cars. So he decided to do something about it, the New York Times reports. Bell is a computer scientist and he developed a machine learning algorithm that can study traffic camera footage and calculate how often bike and bus lanes are blocked by other vehicles. He trained the algorithm with around 2,000 images of different types of vehicles and for bus lanes, he set the system to be able to tell the difference between buses that are allowed to idle at bus stops and other vehicles that aren't. Then, he applied his algorithm to 10 days of publicly available video from a traffic camera in Harlem.