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Regional council demands faster implementation of speed cameras

Council is considering a plan to double the number of local automated speed enforcement sites but says more cameras are also needed
Casey Taylor
Casey Taylor
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The first automated speed enforcement camera in Cambridge was activated on Guelph Avenue near St. Gabriel school last February. Doug Coxson/CambridgeToday

Regional council is looking to put its foot on the gas when it comes to encouraging local drivers to take theirs off a bit.

It comes as council is considering a plan that would see the number of local automated speed enforcement sites doubled to 32 by the end of 2023.

At an Administration and Finance Committee meeting on Tuesday though, council made it pretty clear they're looking to do more.

"This just, to me, has an impression of moving at a glacial pace," Coun. Rob Deutschmann said. "Every election, the number one topic or top three or four topic is speeding in our community."

"We do need to move faster, so why is 32 the number we're looking at?" questioned Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe. "I could use more than 32 in Waterloo; I don't know how many I could use, but certainly more than 32."

A point of clarification, the plan being considered is simply to up the number of potential sites in which a camera could be placed. That though, clearly not enough for most on the committee.

"Thirty-two sites means we're moving two cameras around to 32 sites," Deutschmann noted. "That's not sufficient, that's not safe for our community, we have to move faster."

The issue with adding more cameras, according to regional staff, has to do with back-end processing capacity, or how many tickets we can actually process at one time.

The question then becomes whether the region would look to build up that capacity itself or contract it out to a third party.

"We just want speeding reduced in our community," said Deutschmann. "We don't need to build the best system to process tickets, we need to get moving to get speeding down in our community."

Councillors, also making it known this needs to be an all-of-community effort.

"[Including] areas entering the villages and exiting the villages, those are the areas causing the greatest concern," said Wellesley Mayor Joe Nowak. "I'd really like to see something happen with regard to speed enforcement in the rural areas much, much sooner."

Councillors have asked staff to return with a "roadmap for a rapid implementation plan" after the budget is finished, by the second quarter of 2023.