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NYC Gets 140 Speed Cameras But Albany Controls When They're On
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 30, 2014
Modified Apr 30, 2014
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Apr 30, 2014
Modified Apr 30, 2014
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The New York State Senate has passed a bill that would increase the number of speed cameras from 20 to 140, and the bill is likely to be signed by Governor Cuomo. The 20 cameras already in place are quite effective—in just over 2 months, the cameras caught nearly 12,000 speeders. But the problem is these new cameras will be bound by the same burdensome restrictions: they can only be mounted within a quarter mile of a school, and will only be turned on during weekdays one hour before and one hour after school is in session.
According to Streetsblog, three quarters of traffic fatalities occur outside this time window. Progress on getting NYC more red light cameras (currently there are four stationary and one mobile) is agonizingly slow, in part for the same reason that the city has had such trouble obtaining more speed cameras: Albany refuses to allow the city to police itself.
Newsday reports that Long Island Republican Senator Marty Golden, who had long refused to pass the speed camera legislation because of his ties to the law enforcement lobby, only agreed to vote for it after he found out that Nassau County's budget relied on revenue from the $50 citations from the cameras.
“We have an obligation to protect our children’s safety," Mayor de Blasio says in a statement after the bill's passage "And these additional speed cameras will play a key role in our efforts to reduce pedestrian deaths in school slow zones by changing driver behavior to make us all safer."
There is nothing in the mayor's statement that refers to pushing for home rule in New York City. But safe streets advocacy group Right of Way issued a statement excoriating the bill:
There are 2,500 schools in NYC and 40,000 intersections. 140 speed cameras are just a tiny fraction of what's needed. Charles Komanoff, an organizer with Right of Way and a statistician notes that "the cameras authorized in the bill will cover fewer than 10 percent of the schools in the city and will operate only 20 percent of the time. Do the math, and you’ll see that the bill will likely prevent just a handful of deaths — perhaps one week’s worth in a full year of carnage."
Tagged
andrew cuomo
bill de blasio
pedestrian safety
republicans
speed cameras
state senate
vision zero
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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