The Alberta government is considering cutting photo radar locations by up to 90 per cent because it says they’re “a cash cow” for municipalities.
“This summer, [we are] engaging with municipalities and law enforcement to ensure that photo radar is used in areas to improve traffic safety, not to generate revenue,” Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen, who wasn’t available for an interview, said in an email statement. “There will also be a focus to protect people in school, playground and construction zones.”
Critics of photo radar, also known as automated speed enforcement, argue that ticketing speeders is an easy way for governments to make money and doesn’t make roads safer. They argue that by targeting speeders on busy roads where speeding is common, they’re shooting fish in a barrel.
But safety experts say there’s plenty of evidence that photo radar slows down speeders and prevents or reduces serious and fatal collisions on all roads – and not just on roads with lower speed limits in safety zones.
“There’s no reason to think that photo radar is not effective on any type of road where speeding is a problem,” said Craig Lyon, director of road safety engineering with the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF), an Ottawa-based non-profit.
Karim El-Basyouny, a professor of transportation engineering and research chair in urban traffic safety at the University of Alberta, favours the use of photo radar wherever it can help to reduce speeding, including roads with higher speed limits.
In fact, on roads with higher speed limits, crashes with serious injuries and fatalities are more likely than on slower roads because of “the laws of physics,” El-Basyouny said.
The faster you’re going, the longer it takes to brake and, if you hit someone, there’s more energy being transferred between the vehicles, El-Basyouny said.
“Speed contributes to one-quarter of all road fatalities in Canada,” Valerie Smith, director of road safety programs at Parachute, a Toronto-based non-profit that focuses on injury prevention, said in an email. ”People who argue that speeding should only be challenged and controlled through enforcement on streets near schools or playgrounds … don’t understand the facts.”
Slower cars, fewer crashes
While police officers hand regular speeding tickets to the driver, photo enforcement tickets are sent in the mail to the car’s registered owner.
Because they can’t prove the owner was driving, the tickets don’t come with demerit points, they don’t end up on your driving record and they don’t affect insurance rates.
El-Basyouny shared two dozen studies showing the effectiveness of photo radar – including a study he did in Edmonton – and said there were even more. While results vary by the types of cameras and where they are, the studies show photo radar reduces speeding by 20 to 60 per cent and reduces crashes causing serious and fatal injuries by 10 to 40 per cent.
Also, photo radar reduces extreme speeding – going 40 kilometres an hour or more above the limit – by 66 to 90 per cent.
In Edmonton, total crashes decreased by roughly 20 per cent at photo radar sites since 2013, Christie Pelletier, director of safe mobility with the City of Edmonton, said in an email.
In 2019, when the city wrapped photo radar trucks in yellow to make them more visible, the number of drivers going at or below the speed limit rose to 76 per cent from 64 per cent – and has stayed there since, Pelletier said.
‘Cash cow?’
Alberta has 2,400 photo radar locations. It is looking at reducing that number by 85 to 90 per cent to bring it in line with other provinces.
“You look at other provinces in Canada and Alberta is an outlier. We have a lot more photo radar locations than other provinces and we don’t have that level of safer roads compared to other provinces,” Alberta’s Dreeshen told the Calgary Herald earlier this month. “A lot of people have called photo radar a cash cow and I’m happy to say the cash cow is going to be on the barbecue this summer in Alberta.”
In most other provinces with photo radar, it is limited to intersections or school zones and is relatively new.
In 2019, British Columbia installed 35 red light cameras that also measure speed and is considering adding more, B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor-General said in an email.
Ontario has allowed municipalities to use photo radar in school zones since 2019. Toronto, for instance, started its photo radar campaign with 50 mobile cameras in 2020, added 25 more in 2023 and is considering adding 75 more, the city said in a statement.
A 2023 study by the Hospital for Sick Children found that Toronto’s cameras reduced speeding near schools by 45 per cent.
It’s the second time around for photo radar in British Columbia, which had it on highways from 1996 until 2001, and Ontario, which ran a 10-month photo radar pilot program on highways that ended in 1995.
B.C. killed it after a public pressure campaign by an advocacy group – and saw collisions rise afterward.
In Ontario, the pilot – which nabbed 200,000 speeders – was axed in 1995 by newly elected Progressive Conservative Premier Mike Harris, despite evidence that it had curbed speeding.
At the time, Harris argued that there was no evidence that it was making roads safer.
When launching the new programs, both provinces were clear that photo radar wouldn’t be spreading to highways or faster roads.
“Putting it in school zones is the low-hanging fruit to get people to accept it. It makes it more palatable to the general public,” TIRF’s Lyon said.
In Alberta, 26 municipalities use photo radar.
Edmonton, which has used it since 1993, has 507 photo radar cameras, including 285 in playground zones, 75 at intersections, 121 on roads with speed limits of 50 or 60 kilometres an hour and 27 on roads with speed limits of 70 kilometres an hour or more.
Revenues are split between municipalities and the province. Alberta says $171-million in revenue was generated by photo radar across the province in 2022-2023.
In 2023, Edmonton collected more than $26-million from photo radar tickets, Pelletier said.
Edmonton’s photo radar cash goes to a reserve fund that pays for speed bumps, crosswalk upgrades and other road safety initiatives, Pelletier said.
Calgary Police said it determined where to put its 420 photo radar locations after looking at traffic volume, frequency of speeding, the number and type of collisions, the seriousness of injuries and concerns from the community.
From 2001 to 2023, intersections near the busiest photo radar locations saw a 23-per-cent drop in collisions to 531 in 2023 from 689 in 2001, Calgary police said in an email.
Fewer ‘fishing holes?’
Alberta has been culling photo radar locations since 2019, when, just before a provincial election, the then-NDP government banned photo radar on multilane highways unless there was proof of safety concerns.
When the United Conservative government was elected in 2019 it put a freeze on adding new photo radar locations.
In November, it banned photo radar on ring roads in Edmonton and Calgary. At the time, Dreeshen called those roads, where speed limits are 100 kilometres an hour, “fishing holes.” He has argued that low accident rates on these roads prove that speed enforcement is unnecessary.
“When you have certain beautiful highways built and engineered very well and you’re seeing low accident data and yet hundreds of thousands of dollars of ticket revenue, that, in most peoples’ minds, is a fishing hole,” Dreeshen told the Calgary Herald last year. “These sites are focused on revenue rather than traffic safety.”
Since the ban, there has, “anecdotally,” been more speeding and dangerous behaviour on Calgary’s ring road, police said.
So why not just let officers catch speeders? Calgary police said it doesn’t always have enough officers or resources to set up speed traps – and “it is simply not safe,” for officers to pull over speeding cars, it said.
While it’s too soon to know the long-term effects of axing photo radar, the University of Alberta’s El-Basyouny expects a rise in speeds and crashes. “Any policies that would prohibit or limit the [photo radar] program will have a huge impact on road safety outcomes with a potential for increases in fatal and injury collisions,” he said.
Parachute’s Smith said talk of fishing holes, cash grabs and cash cows ignores that speeding is dangerous – and illegal.
“There is a super-easy way to avoid getting a fine from photo radar: Don’t drive over the speed limit,” Smith said. “If you don’t speed, no one grabs your cash, and you reduce your risk of injuring yourself or others.”
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