Since a two-year-old boy was struck and killed by a car in South Boston last July, neighbors have intensified their call for safer streets.
They have rallied for lower speed limits, more stop signs, traffic lights, well-marked crosswalks and more police. But despite all that has been done, drivers still speed up and down the streets of Southie, and residents say they feel unsafe just walking across the street.
Boston City Councilman Ed Flynn has lobbied to reduce the speed limit to 20 miles per hour, and not just in school zones. In fact, Flynn thinks 20 miles per hour is too fast in his community, and he would like to make it 15. But he admits that without a cop on every corner, getting drivers to actually slow down remains a challenge.
Enter the virtual cop that, although controversial, appears to be very effective.
Last January, the city of Providence installed cameras in five school zones to cut down on the number of drivers ignoring the 20 mph speed limit. When a driver exceeded the limit by 11 miles per hour, the camera automatically photographed the vehicle’s license plate and the operator was sent a ticket in the mail. In just two weeks, more than 12,000 tickets were issued and a half million dollars raised for the city’s coffers.
Drivers were outraged. Hundreds showed up in court to protest the $95 fines. Those who received hearings had their tickets dismissed by the judge who found fault with the lack of warning and problems with the tickets themselves. As the result of a class action suit, many drivers received $20 refunds, and the law permitting them was rescinded.
Critics assailed the speed cameras as an invasion of privacy and a gimmick for city officials to raise more revenue, but Stephen Pare, Providence's commissioner of public safety, says they are the one thing he has seen that really changes drivers’ behavior and forces them to reduce their speed. Pare says when the cameras were operating, the number of motorists who exceeded 30 miles per hour in school zones dropped by 75-80 percent.
So, over the summer the program was reworked. Cameras would be active only during school hours, and there would be a 30-day warning period before tickets with fines were issued. And the cost of the ticket was lowered from $95 to $50. Fifteen cameras were installed at schools throughout the city, and they were reactivated September 4, the first day of school. Tickets will again be issued beginning this week.
Pare says the cameras come with two big advantages: no police officers are required to operate or monitor them, and they do not discriminate. The cameras, he says, “don’t care if you’re young or old, black or white, male or female. Everyone gets treated the same.”
Pare says the technology is advanced and very reliable.
But it's not cheap: Conduent, the company that makes them, charges $9,000 a month per camera, plus $7.50 per ticket issued. But Pare says considering the $50 fine charged to drivers per ticket, the cameras pay for themselves.
So why don’t we see them in Massachusetts? Because there is no state law that enables communities to deploy them, as there is in 14 other states including Rhode Island. State transportation officials like Peter Sutton, director of pedestrian and bike safety for MassDOT, says he is aware of the camera technology and the success that many cities have had with it. But Sutton says it would require action from the legislature to permit them here.
So far on Beacon Hill, there is little interest in the cameras. This isn't surprising, since lawmakers in Rhode Island were skittish about having their names associated with what could be seen as “Big Brother” technology. But City Councilor Flynn, for one, would like to see the law on the books.
“I would support that, it keeps people honest," says Flynn. "We can't have police out on the roads all the time. Maybe that's an effective tool to discourage people from driving so fast in this community.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the company that manufactures the speed cameras. The company's name is Conduent.
