This coming spring, Santa Monica, a beach city in Southern California, will set a precedent by becoming the first U.S. city to integrate an AI system into its municipal parking enforcement vehicles to monitor bike lane infractions.
Beginning in April, Santa Monica will equip seven of its parking enforcement vehicles with Hayden AI's innovative scanning technology, a step forward from the city’s current use of similar camera systems on buses.
"Reducing illegal parking enhances safety for cyclists," explained Charley Territo, Chief Growth Officer at Hayden AI, in an interview with Ars.
Hayden AI's technology, which identifies bike lane and bus zone violations, is not new to California or the nation. It is already operational in cities such as Oakland and Sacramento, as well as other major urban centers like New York City, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. By September 2025, the company had successfully installed 2,000 systems globally.
In a recent deployment at the University of California, San Diego, Hayden AI’s system logged over 1,100 parking violations over 59 days. Notably, 88 percent of these violations involved bike lane obstructions.
Hayden AI markets its technology to city governments with the dual goals of enhancing bus transit speed by eliminating obstacles and ensuring safety. "We mitigate one of the prime causes of bus collisions—lane deviations," Territo noted. He elaborated that reducing such deviations lessens the likelihood of accidents.