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Chicopee mayor announces plan to add cameras to school buses, sends measure to City Council
Summary
Mayor Vieux told the School Committee the city will seek to install cameras on school buses to ticket drivers who pass when lights are flashing; the proposal is on the City Council agenda and officials expect a summer pilot and training before the school year.
Mayor Vieux told the Chicopee School Committee Monday that the city will move to install cameras on school buses to ticket motorists who fail to stop while buses are loading and unloading students, and that he has placed the measure on the City Council agenda for consideration.
The announcement came during the School Committee's public announcements. Vieux said the procurement office and the school department have already added camera requirements to the request for proposals for the district's next bus contract, and that adoption of the new state statute enabling camera enforcement will allow the city to install the devices, train drivers and police, and set up a citation and fine-collection process.
Why it matters: School bus stop-arm violations put students at risk and are a statewide enforcement issue. The mayor cited figures from other Massachusetts pilot programs and said Chicopee intends to move quickly so a local program can be in place before the 2025–26 school year.
Details officials outlined include adding camera language to the bus-vendor RFP, coordinating installation and training with the police department and transportation staff, and establishing an administrative ticketing and fine-collection workflow. Vieux said procurement and the school department will use the summer to implement the program.
The mayor pointed to pilot programs in other Massachusetts cities and counties and cited early data: “Over the first 6 weeks at the start of a '24–'25 season, there were 700 illegal school bus passings in Peabody and 1,100 individual illegal bus passings in Salem,” he said to illustrate the scale of the problem.
Vieux also framed the action as relying on a recent change at the state level. “I want to thank our legislators in Beacon Hill for passing this statute in this law,” he said, referring to newly enabling legislation that allows localities to use cameras to enforce bus stop-arm violations.
Next steps: The measure is on the City Council agenda for its next meeting; implementation would require council approval, vendor contracting, mounting cameras on buses, driver and police training, and administrative set-up to issue fines. The mayor said the procurement language for the upcoming bus contract already includes provisions to support camera installation and operation.
No vote on the enforcement program was taken by the School Committee; the mayor reported that he has submitted the matter to the City Council for formal consideration.
