Mayor answers to London
CCTV on Buses
| Question number | 1169/2010 |
| Meeting date | 17/03/2010 |
Question by Joanne McCartney
Did a trial of live CCTV on buses take place?
What were the results?
Is it being rolled out to all buses?
What are the costs involved?
What effect on crime did it have?
Answer by Boris Johnson (1st Term)
The trial began in October 2008 and involved 21 buses.The trial was intended to allow TfL to assess the benefits of viewing real-time CCTV footage from a bus when its driver makes a radio call that requires urgent assistance.
An evaluation of the trial was carried out by TfL and Professor Martin Gill, a leading national expert in CCTV. The evaluation determined that the majority of radio calls made by drivers during the trial period were resolved quickly, often in immediate response to the driver first making radio contact and therefore the availability of live CCTV footage provided no additional benefit. A further proportion of incidents occurred off-bus and were therefore not captured by the on-bus CCTV.
The trial did not produce evidence of a reduction in crime that can be ascribed to the presence of live CCTV. A control route was selected to allow a comparison of crime rates with the trialled route. No significant difference in crime rates was displayed. For this reason, TfL has no plans to roll out live CCTV to the entire fleet, and have therefore not calculated the costs that would be involved.
