CALIFORNIA, USA — AB 645 was made law last year in California. It allows for six California cities to pilot speed safety cameras for five years on city streets.
Los Angeles, Glendale, Long Beach, San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland are the cities included.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will be implementing 33 speed cameras within San Francisco.
Shannon Hake is the program manager for the speed safety cameras with SFMTA. She says a lot of work has been done to make San Francisco streets safer for all.
"The data shows that we still need to do even more to reduce vehicle speeds, so we’ve been lobbying for something like this in the California state legislature for almost a decade now," said Hake.
She says they're placing the cameras in places that will save the most lives. When choosing where to place them, they looked at places with high volumes of speed-related crashes, or a large number of serious or fatal injuries.
"Some of the most egregious speeding we see happening in the city occurs in front of schools, in front of senior centers or parks. We do not want to see another child or senior killed by a speeding vehicle, so we're planning to focus our cameras in the areas with the most vulnerable San Franciscans," said Hake.
Hake says the cities involved are communicating about the implementation of the cameras. She says the state law has the same penalties and costs for all six cities and it’s a graduated payment scale depending on speed.
According to Hake, the first citation will generally be free. After that, if someone is traveling 11-15 mph over the limit, they could receive a $50 ticket. If someone was going 100 mph, the price would be higher, like $500.
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Assemblyman Phil Ting, who represents the 19th Assembly District, is a lead co-author of AB 645. He says money collected from the tickets will go to traffic mitigation measures like speed bumps or traffic circles.
"The whole point is not to rack up a whole bunch of citations. The whole point is to reduce speeding and these cameras are acting as a deterrent, but also there will be signs, there will be notifications," said Ting.
AB 645 says cities must have a speed limit sign that says 'photo enforced' within 500 feet of the camera. SMFTA says they will have at least one warning sign at all 33 speed camera locations.
Ting says they want to be sensitive not to penalize people who may not be able to afford it, and says there is leeway there.
Hake says when the cameras are turned on, there won't be fees for the first 60 days, just a note in the mail.
David Biesanz, who's lived in Sacramento since 1987, says the speed cameras would give a message to the people who are always speeding to slow down. He likes people could first get a warning because they could get caught up in the flow of traffic.
"I think it's great, first of all, to get a warning. So if you’re looking at $100, it’s going to tell me –slow down. You've got to brake, don’t do it again," said Biesanz.
Ting says he thinks speed cameras could end up coming to places like Sacramento.
"Hopefully Sacramento will see San Francisco as a success, and that they’ll want to implement this as well. I think Sacramento, especially the downtown area is a great place to bike, to walk," said Ting.
Hake says they need to clear some legislative hurdles before the cameras are implemented but hopes to have the system online by early 2025.
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