Nearly two years after state legislation enabled some California cities to pilot life-saving speed cameras, the city of Los Angeles expects at least another year of delay before deployment. The program could be a win-win, resulting in safer streets and more revenue - all as L.A. faces high levels of traffic deaths, and a budget crisis deepened by crash death/injury liability payouts.
In September 2023 the state passed A.B. 645, allowing six cities to pilot speed camera programs. The state law has specific criteria to ensure that these pilots are equitable, effective, transparent, and respectful of data privacy. The law sunsets in January 2032.
San Francisco turned speed cameras on in March. In August, after a few months of warning tickets, SF levied actual fines for those going at least 11 mph over the posted limit. In just the month of April, SF's 20 cameras found 31,000 drivers speeding. That's more than 1,000 speeding violations per day.
Oakland is poised to install cameras this year. Elsewhere, camera plans are proceeding in Glendale, San Jose, and Malibu. Long Beach's program appears stalled.
Back in 2023, an L.A. City Council motion [council file 23-1168] got planning underway. Since then there has not been much urgency from the council, Mayor Bass, or the Transportation Department (LADOT).
At this morning's meeting of the City Council Transportation Committee, LADOT delivered a progress report on the speed camera program.
The progress report reads like the bureaucratese version of "look busy." Excess unneeded details ("in person or hybrid meetings as appropriate") meet repetition ("evaluate procurement options" then "pursuing procurement options") to avoid acknowledging that the DOT made very little progress. It would almost be funny if it weren't cloaking city inaction on speeding drivers who kill hundreds of people every year.
Basically LADOT took a circuitous route to hire a consultant to get the speed program underway. The consultant is expected to start by the end of this month. Then comes community engagement, with meetings expected in October and November.
Then the city will approve policies, finalize locations, install cameras, test, notify the public, issue warning tickets, then issue actual pay-the-fine tickets.
LADOT now anticipates that the first camera will be activated "by the end of calendar year 2026," but they note that that assumes the city can "piggyback on another municipality's contract." This morning DOT representatives noted that the SF contract didn't meet L.A. City's needs (for lack of an "in-person support center, a call center," and an unexplained "one other" reason), and DOT hopes that Oakland's contract might work for L.A.
If the city is unable to take advantage of Oakland's contract, naturally the "timeline would be further impacted" as L.A. does a full Request For Proposals (RFP) procurement process.
Though Councilmembers Heather Hutt and Tracy Park expressed frustrations that the camera program was taking too long, no one proposed any accelerated timelines or deadlines, nor even stepped up reports back to the Transportation Committee.
At the current levels of departmental inactivity and elected official disinterest, it looks like there will be no L.A. speed camera pilot until 2027. Or 2028. Or never.
Meanwhile the body count keeps rising.
