Starting September 22, if your crew is running a night lane closure on the Verrazzano, the RFK, or any of the seven other MTA crossings, the camera in that cone zone is live and it's not just watching — it's billing.

The MTA's automated work-zone speed camera program goes into full enforcement this week, following the same 60-day warning-notice runway the city used when congestion pricing cameras first went live. After that window, a driver clocked speeding through a posted, active work zone gets a violation in the mail, first offense included.

This isn't a general traffic-safety press release — it's aimed squarely at protecting the people your firm has standing in the roadbed. Work-zone strikes are one of the more common ways a highway or bridge job turns into an Incident Report headline, and the MTA has been explicit that this program follows a spike in vehicles hitting barriers and workers on bridge and tunnel approaches.

For a contractor running MTA Bridges and Tunnels work, the practical change is upstream of the driver getting fined: signage and posted work-zone boundaries now carry more weight, because they're the trigger for enforcement. If your traffic control plan has a zone that isn't clearly signed and dated when the crew is actually out there, that's the gap the program exposes — a work zone that's "active" on paper but not obviously marked isn't going to generate fines, and it's not protecting your guys either.

Foremen and safety managers on MTA highway and bridge contracts should confirm with their PM that posted work-zone signage matches the actual footprint and hours of active work before September 22 — mismatched signage is now a liability question, not just a traffic-control one.

First reported by FOX 5 New York and SILive.com; program details from the MTA.