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Report: Wrong Foot Forward
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Report: Slowing Speeds, Saving Lives

Anyone who has ever walked or driven along the Grand Concourse, Queens Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, or Manhattan avenues knows that deadly speeding is rampant on NYC streets. A 1999 study on Queens Boulevard by the NYC Department of Transportation found that 25% of motorists exceeded 40 mph – 10 mph over the speed limit.

Unfortunately, as the continued speeding and deadly carnage on Queens Boulevard has shown, the police cannot be everywhere at all times. However, automated speed cameras – proven in hundreds of locations internationally and over two dozen in the U.S. – can provide tremendously effective, 24 hour a day speeding enforcement that squashes speeding, and saves lives.

NYC’s automated red light camera enforcement program has conclusively demonstrated that automated enforcement is a successful, cost-effective means of reducing traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths, and that the public supports automated enforcement. For NYC, speed cameras are the logical next step beyond red light enforcement: they employ the same technology as red light cameras, and help police to target an equally dangerous driver behavior - speeding.

Speed cameras are a cost effective and fair law enforcement tool that:

• Decrease the number and severity of crashes, and the number of traffic deaths.
• Lower overall traffic speeds.
• Enforce traffic laws without discrimination.
• Free up police officers for more serious crime prevention.
• Increase the overall perception of traffic enforcement.
• Put the cost of the program on violators, rather than taxpayers.
• Reduce the number of high-speed chases and hazardous situations for officers.
• Are supported by the public as a means of reducing speeds and crashes.

To get speed cameras for NYC, the state legislature should pass state legislation with a three-year sunset clause that would pilot speed cameras.  The legislation would introduce 10 cameras in the first year of the program, and 10 more in the second year, for a total of twenty speed cameras. Program revenues and effectiveness would be evaluated at one and two-year intervals in reports submitted by the NYC Chief of Police to the governor, president of the senate, and speaker of the assembly. The legislation would expire three years from the start date, unless the sunset clause was extended or repealed before such date.

In order to begin a speed camera program in NYC, home rule legislation must be passed by the NYC City Council, and State legislation must be passed by the State Assembly and Senate, and signed into law by Governor Pataki. Transportation Alternatives will be pursuing all of these paths vigorously in the 2001 legislative session.  

Read the full report

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