Safety measure or cash grab? Hamilton photo-radar tickets are piling up fast
Hamilton's first location for a photo-radar camera on Stone Church Road caught a whopping 12,500 speeders in one month - or about half the total ticket haul the city expected over an entire year.
The eye-popping statistics are prompting questions about both the original camera location and the city's claim that the program is not meant to be a money-maker.
Hamilton X-Police owner Steve Petersen said he has been contacted by a would-be client who is mulling whether to fight 17 photo-radar tickets racked up in a little more than a week.
The former police officer-turned-paralegal said he supports cracking down on dangerous speeders, but questioned whether issuing tickets for 11 km/h over the limit in a largely commercial 50 km/h zone is a fair or effective deterrent.
Some people are going to see that as a money grab, straight up," he said.
City traffic officials, however, stress the goal of the road safety experiment is to slow traffic and protect pedestrians - and early results suggest average speeds do fall. That's important, since Hamilton crash statistics show speeding and aggressive driving are factors in about half of all collisions.
They also say the program could still be revenue negative" after the cameras cycle through less-busy residential areas.
It's certainly a larger number than we initially estimated," said traffic operations manager Mike Field of the flurry of tickets mailed out to drivers who zipped along Stone Church between Dartnall and Pritchard roads in October.
But I think at many other locations, we'll see only a fraction of the traffic and therefore, fewer tickets."
Originally, city staff guesstimated rotating two photo-radar cameras through various street locations over a year would result in about 25,000 tickets with an average fine of around $70. That would have meant program costs of $2.45 million offset by ticket revenue of $1.75 million, leaving the city to cover a $700,000 deficit.
But the final tally for October alone came in at around 12,500 tickets. The average fine amount is not yet known, but an early sample based on two weeks of data suggested the average speeder was travelling 14 km/h over the limit and the average ticket was worth $103.
Notably, average speeds on Stone Church also dropped below 50 km/h midway through the experiment, said Field.
He also said residents should look at the high number of tickets in context. Those 12,500 tickets - which include some repeat offenders - were issued over a month that saw 300,000-plus vehicles pass by the Stone Church cameras.
The current December location for the cameras, Bellagio Avenue, sees annual average daily traffic of about 1,500 vehicles. By comparison, parts of Stone Church East can see up to 20,000 daily vehicles in a normal year.
Some councillors have asked why the camera program started on the east Mountain arterial road, given the long list of residential areas that spur speeding complaints from worried citizens.
I'm still shaking my head over how that (street) was selected," said Ward 14 councillor Terry Whitehead in a recent public works meeting, noting the largely commercial strip has no homes or parks nearby. You can't set up a community safety zone when there are no residents (living) within two kilometres of that location."
Field said each of the original 12 community safety zones" where cameras will be set up were ranked based on factors like collision history, speeding problems and pedestrian vulnerability. (Another six spots were recently added after consultation with councillors.) Some cameras are specifically destined for school zones.
He agreed the Stone Church strip is largely commercial - but it also hosts the Hamilton Mountain Mosque and an Islamic school that serves up to 200 students. There have been recent collisions nearby involving pedestrians and a cyclist, Field added.
At times, there are quite a few pedestrians - and they don't have sidewalks," he said.
Speeding drivers are a long-standing worry for congregants, said mosque administrator Zafar Siddiqui. Certainly we have had a few accidents because of that," he said.
Siddiqui said he supports efforts to slow drivers along Stone Church - but added he thinks traffic-calming measures like speed bumps might be more effective than cameras. Adding sidewalks would be helpful regardless, he said.
People did slow down, but now that (the cameras) are gone? We will have to see," he said.
Matthew Van Dongen is a Hamilton-based reporter covering transportation for The Spectator. Reach him via email: mvandongen@thespec.com