Collingwood council wants to learn more about the possibility of automated speed enforcement on town streets.
At council’s meeting on Dec. 2, Coun. Kathy Jeffery’s motion calling on town staff to facilitate a presentation on a future automated speed enforcement program for the town no later than Jan. 31, 2025, was put on the floor.
“I know this council and the community have been waiting for a long time for this to move forward,” said Mayor Yvonne Hamlin.
The motion calls on the presentation to be made available to council before Jan. 31 of next year, to help inform any decisions council will make out of the town’s master mobility and transportation plan, which is also expected to come before council in January. Jeffery said her vision is to get automated speed enforcement “stat,” and said she didn’t want to wait until the results of the plan to make a move on it.
The motion notes the Collingwood OPP Detachment Board (known at the time as the Collingwood Police Services Board) had completed a cursory review of the idea pre-COVID, but at that time, automated speed enforcement was deemed financially prohibitive.
However, a lot has changed since COVID, and other municipalities in Simcoe County have since jumped on the automated-speed-enforcement bandwagon, such as Essa Township and Bradford West Gwillimbury.
In Bradford, a one-year pilot project with Global Traffic Solutions started in May with four cameras placed in different locations and operated remotely, to automatically detect and photograph vehicles exceeding the speed limit so tickets could be issued to the vehicle owners by mail. The cameras are battery-operated and can be operated out of various roadside boxes or mounted to posts or poles.
From May to July, the program issued 16,126 tickets from its four cameras. This resulted in roughly $1.88 million worth of penalties, from which about $289,000 was paid to the province and almost $738,000 was paid in other expenses (including but not limited to the confidential vendor charge), leaving the town with about $851,380 in estimated net profit in that three-month period.
“I’m absolutely delighted to be supporting this motion. Every other day, I hear comments in town of folks complaining about ... excessive speeding in our neighbourhoods,” said Coun. Christopher Baines, a sentiment echoed by councillors Steve Perry and Deb Doherty.
“I think this is amazing,” said Perry.
Doherty noted that under current rules, automated speed enforcement should only be in community safety zones. She asked if information regarding expanding the use to any road in the community could be included in the presentation.
“If it can’t be done, it can’t be done, but we certainly aren’t alone in our desire to expand the program,” she said. “Its use could be so much more effective if we expanded.”
At the end of the discussion, council voted unanimously in favour of having a presentation be made to council on automated speed enforcement no later than Jan. 31. Coun. Brandon Houston is on a leave of absence.
— With files from Michael Owen
