If approved by city council during this year's municipal budget process, automatic speed enforcement (ASE) cameras could arrive in Greater Sudbury by the end of the year.
The ASE program is separate from red light cameras, which council has shown interest in installing. A story last week on sudbury.com that has been deleted mistakenly confused the two programs. We apologize for the error.
The ASE program is a little further advanced than the red light cameras, which are about two years away. Council requested a separate report on the ASE program as another option in this year's budget deliberations.
The report says the Ontario Traffic Council has organized an Automated Speed Enforcement Working Group that includes representatives from government organizations across Ontario working to develop the Automated Speed Enforcement program.
The group is also working on an RFP for the equipment needed to install and operate the cameras.
“At this time, the costs associated with leasing ASE equipment are unknown and will not be known until the RFP process is completed,” the staff report says.
Since last fall, Toronto has operated a sort of dry run with the cameras, monitoring drivers and gathering data on the speed and number of vehicles, but not issuing tickets.
Toronto is also doing a feasibility study on creating and managing a joint processing centre (JPC), which they would run and participating municipalities would help pay for.
“There will be a fee charged to participating municipalities for processing/analyzing data of ASE offences,” the report said. “This fee will be based on the number of tickets/offences processed.
“If there is not one JPC for the entire province, municipalities will be required to setup their own processing centre or partner with other municipalities to setup a smaller scale JPC. The costs associated with setting up and operating a processing centre are unknown at this time.”
The planning is expected to be compete in the coming months, with the cameras ready in either late 2019 or early 2020, the report concluded.
Read the full report here.
