Here is where Hamilton would put automatic speed enforcement cameras in 2022
Published September 16, 2021 at 7:05 pm
The City of Hamilton’s public works department will soon recommend 24 locations where automatic speed enforcement (ASE) would become permanent.
A staff report will be presented at a public works committee meeting on Monday (Sept. 20) as a discussion item. It recommends that the city, which is wrapping up one-year pilot project with ASE, begin rolling out the program in 2022. The report says that the annual collision reports kept in the city show that speeding and aggressive driving contribute to half of the motor vehicle collisions in the city.
The system uses cameras and sensors to detect speeding. The first enforcement zones, according to a schedule, would be on Upper Sherman Avenue (from Limeridge Road East to Mohawk Road East) and Cranbrook Drive (from Gretna Court to Glenvale Drive).
The program’s net operating cost would be $600,000. It’s expected about 20,000 tickets, at $80 per pop, would be issued.
Since last October, the city has run at an ASE pilot project at 18 different locations. Units were installed and operated at the approved locations either
for two week or one-month intervals. While data was not available from all of the locations, what was collected showed that reduced vehicle speeds “lasted residually after they (the ASE units) were removed.”
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Traffic engineers use 85th-percentile speed — the speed at or below which 85% of vehicles travel — to evaluate such measures. In Hamilton’s case, they found that 85th-percentile speed dropped 10 kilometres per hour on average between the pre-enforcement and enforcement period, and 5 km/h between pre-enforcement and post-enforcement.
In one instance, 85th-percentile speed on Mountain Brow Boulevard between Broker Drive and Mohawk Road East dropped 67 km/h to 48, in a 40 zone.
Obeying posted speed limits also increased by 29 per cent.
Under Ontario law, a city may establish community safety zones on public roads that its maintains. It can also install ASE tech on roads with a speed limit under 80 km/h in community safety and school zones.
Mississauga, Toronto and Durham Region are among the other areas that are using automatic speed enforcement to try to increase roadway safety.
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