Update
On Dec. 6, 2024, the City of St. Albert posted a notice saying that photo radar enforcement had resumed in St. Albert school zones as of Dec. 6, having been suspended from Dec. 1 to 5. The Gazette will have more on the state of photo radar in St. Albert next week.
St. Albert could lose nearly half of its photo radar sites under new rules tabled by the provincial government — rules that have already brought photo enforcement in much of the city to a halt.
Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen announced new restrictions on the use of photo radar in Alberta on Dec. 2, 2024.
Effective April 1, 2025, photo radar will be restricted to school, playground, and construction zones, and not allowed on any numbered provincial highway. Fixed intersection cameras will be restricted to red light enforcement only, and not allowed to issue “speed on green” tickets.
Dreeshen said these changes were made in response to decades of criticism from residents who saw photo radar as a cash cow that penalized drivers without improving public safety.
“Today, I’m announcing the end of photo radar as a revenue generator. Going forward, its focus will become traffic safety,” he said.
The changes follow months of consultation with Alberta municipalities and a freeze on the introduction of new photo radar sites and equipment implemented in 2019.
Dreeshen said all 2,200 photo radar sites in the province will be reviewed in the next four months to see if they follow these new rules. The province expects the rules to eliminate about 70 per cent of them, leaving just 650.
Dreeshen said photo radar generated about $145 million in revenue last year across the province “at the expense of public trust.” He said the province will not compensate municipalities for revenue lost because of these new rules, but will provide money to re-engineer roads and intersections that are demonstrably unsafe.
Dreeshen did not specify the amount of money the province had available for such re-engineering, saying only that, “We have a number in our head.” The specific amount will be determined in the next provincial budget.
Dreeshen said municipalities could ask the province to allow photo radar at specific high-collision spots where other safety measures were ineffective. Such exceptions will be reviewed every two years to see if those sites actually reduced collisions. Photo radar will also be allowed in school, playground, or construction zones located on numbered provincial highways.
Big cuts
St. Albert is one of the 24 Alberta communities that has photo radar (sometimes called automated traffic enforcement.)
Aaron Giesbrecht, the city’s manager of police services, said St. Albert has 125 RCMP-approved photo radar sites spread across about 50 locations (some locations have multiple sites, such as one site per direction of traffic). These new rules will likely disqualify about 44 per cent of these sites, reducing the city to 64 sites in school and playground zones and the six red-light cameras on St. Albert Trail. As St. Albert Trail is technically a numbered provincial highway (Hwy. 2), it’s unclear if those cameras (or any of the other radar sites on the Trail) will actually be allowed to keep operating.
St. Albert’s photo radar contractor, Global Traffic Group, has temporarily suspended operations as of Dec. 1 as it figures out the impacts of the province’s new rules, Giesbrecht said.
“As of right now [Dec. 3], all photo enforcement operations are suspended in St. Albert with the exception of red light cameras.”
Giesbrecht said the city’s bylaw department is working with the St. Albert RCMP to make more people available for in-person traffic enforcement, but noted that doing so could leave them less time to address other safety issues.
In an email, St. Albert Public spokesperson Paula Power said the board is concerned about the potential loss of photo radar enforcement in school zones and welcomes any measures the city could take to keep school zones safe.
“With or without photo radar, we hope that our community continues to respect the speed limits in school zones — they’re in place for a reason. Student safety should always be a priority for our whole community.”
The city took in about $410,000 in net revenue from photo radar last year, Giesbrecht said. The draft 2025 budget projects this to fall to $85,000 because of the new rules. St. Albert uses this money to fund emergency services, policing, and traffic safety initiatives.
What now?
Giesbrecht said it’s unclear how these new rules will affect traffic safety in St. Albert, as safety is also affected by weather, street design, and other elements.
“At this point, we just don’t know.”
Research and statistical data suggest St. Albert could see a rise in collisions and speeding if it reduces photo enforcement.
Scottsdale, Ariz., did a nine-month trial of a photo radar camera along a freeway in 2006, researcher Kangwon Shin writes. When the camera was on, officials saw a nine mile per hour drop in average speeds and a decrease in almost all collision types along the road. When they turned the camera off after the trial, there was a 10.5 times jump in the number of speeders.
A 2014 study by the University of Arizona’s Jeffrey Skubic found that removing speed cameras from a specific Arizona highway did not significantly change the number of crashes or deaths along it, but appeared to double the amount of admissions to trauma centres as a result of crashes.
Multiple studies have found photo radar does reduce speeding and collisions. A 2010 analysis of 35 photo radar studies published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found that speed cameras reduced the proportion of vehicles speeding by 14 to 65 per cent and reduced collisions by eight to 49 per cent, suggesting that they were “a worthwhile intervention for reducing the number of road traffic injuries and deaths.”
St. Albert’s 2023 Automated Traffic Enforcement Report found that proportion of vehicles caught speeding at an unacceptable rate at photo radar sites had dropped 92 per cent since the city introduced photo radar in 2001. (Note that factors other than the introduction of photo radar could explain this change.)
Giesbrecht said administration is studying the impact of the province’s new rules and will have a report to council early next year.
