CBS waiting to see if traffic cameras will be a good fit

By Craig Westcott

The Town of CBS is interested in signing onto the Province’s traffic cameras program to enhance public safety, but will have to wait as government officials analyze the data generated so far by its pilot program and figures out how the program can be used to fine speeders.
The Province introduced the pilot program in Paradise and Mount Pearl last June. The purpose was two-fold; to get a handle on the number of drivers who are speeding, and to send warning notes to the owners of cars caught speeding on camera. Nobody has been ticketed as of yet as it will take legislative changes before penalties can be levied that are based on evidence from the cameras.
Mayor Darrin Bent said officials from the Town recently met with a representative from Digital Government NL, the department that implemented the pilot program. It’s also the department that oversees Motor Vehicle Registration and the collection of fines.
Bent noted the Province recently released some figures from the pilot study.
“And quite frankly the results were alarming,” he said. “They only had one camera in place for each municipality and they moved it a couple of times, but they came up with over 90,000 speeding infractions. And that was a minimum of 11 kph over the speed limit. If you were going eight (kilometres faster than the speeding limit) they didn’t pick you up. It was still at 90,000 and a good per centage of those were 20 kilometres over the speed limit. So, because of that, and because of our concern over safety here as a council in Conception Bay South and the concerns of our residents, we reached out to the department because we wanted to learn more about the program, and where it was going and how it would work and so forth.
It turns out, however, that there’s lots remaining to be worked out on the government’s end.
“They’ve got their results, they’ve tried it, they’ve worked with one particular vendor for the cameras and so forth, and they’re working to finalize how it would roll out for anywhere else, any other municipality, or on provincial roads itself,” Bent said. “They’re going to keep us up to date on how that goes and the answers they get there and we’ll be keenly interested to find out to see if it’s something that would possibly work for here. But, of course, we want to make sure it fits within out needs, it fits within out budget and is something that we can work with here in Conception Bay South if we so desire and if our residents so desire. So, we are interested, we’ve had the meetings and we’ll continue to be updated by the department on their progress in figuring out on how they want to roll it out.”