One of Albany’s old traffic cameras at the corner of Queen and Geary, seen here last December.
In December 2023, the Albany City Council decided to equip four intersections with cameras to catch speeders and red light violators. The cameras could be installed soon, and then we will see if they bring the expected result.
“We expect the number of tickets to rise from the current 1,500 per year (at the only location where red light enforcement is carried out) to 17,000 per year until drivers’ behavior changes,” City Manager Peter Troedsson told council in his weekly report on Friday.
Really?
In its mandatory biennial report to the Legislature in February 2023 on photo surveillance, Albany police said the cameras at the intersection of Queen and Geary generated an average of 496 tickets per year over the 10 years from 2013 to 2022.
In 2022, citations fell to 274. “The citation rate appears to have plateaued,” the report said.
It is not clear how putting speed cameras at traffic lights can lead to many tickets. Half of the traffic is just waiting for the light to change. If drivers do not wait, they usually slow down or accelerate again.
There are the odd driver who will speed up to avoid the light turning from yellow to red, but even then, in my experience of 47 years in Albany traffic, it’s usually not racing speed.
So if Queen/Geary catches an average of 500 red light violators per year and another 500 speeders, that’s 1,000 tickets. The other three locations aren’t as busy as Queen/Geary, but let’s assume they also issue 1,000 tickets per year.
This brings us to around 4,000 tickets and not the 17,000 that the city expects “until drivers’ behavior changes.”
How is the project going? In an email on Tuesday, Police Chief Marcia Harnden said:
“The final logistical steps between the company and the city of Albany are nearing completion. This work includes what tickets will be issued, where they will go and how the data transfer will work. Then the project will move to the engineers who will work on the installation. We do not have a set date for go-live yet. As we get closer, we will provide full information to the public. No charges have been filed against the city yet. That will only happen when tickets are issued. We have hired a new clerk of court to handle the upcoming workload.”
In case you forgot, the locations where photo surveillance will be installed or reinforced:
Queen/Geary (existing camera upgraded to speed and red light). These are the entrances from the north and west.
North Albany Road at Thornton Lake Drive (north and south approaches for speed limits and red lights). This is a school zone.
Queen at Elm (east and west approaches for speed limits and red lights). This is the school zone on Queen for West Albany High School and Memorial Middle School.
Santiam at Geary (east and west approaches regarding speed limit and red light), where Harnden said there were speeding issues.
The plan is to activate the new cameras first on Queen/Geary and North Albany Road and then evaluate the resulting workload before activating the other two sets.
Will this reduce the number of accidents? Maybe, but according to Albany’s 2023 report to the legislature, the cameras at the Queen/Geary intersection “had no significant impact: 0, 1, 2, or 3 collisions per year for failure to follow the red-yellow-green light pattern from 2003 to 2021.”
But we will see how Albany’s new system works out. (hh)
Signs like this one in Medford could soon appear in Albany.
