Speed vans to return
Citing safety, council votes to put traffic enforcement vehicles back on Santa Fe streets
So-called speed vans soon will return to Santa Fe streets, the City Council decided after a lengthy discussion Wednesday night, voting 5-4 to revive a dormant traffic enforcement program that employs unmanned vehicles equipped with radars and cameras to spot speeders and issue tickets.
Co-sponsors of the measure — Councilors Mike Harris, Peter Ives, Signe Lindell and Ron Trujillo, a candidate for mayor — were all in favor. Councilor Carmichael Dominguez joined to make it a majority.
“It’s not a ‘gotcha,’ ” Trujillo said. “It’s about public safety.”
Dominguez said it was essential for the city to “measure and prove to the public that indeed our streets are getting safer” through the program.
Councilors Joseph Maestas, Chris Rivera, Renee Villarreal and Mayor Javier Gonzales were against the measure.
Gonzales said speeding is only one of many contributing factors to automobile crashes in Santa Fe, and that he would have preferred a broader effort to educate drivers about the dangers of driving under the influence, texting while driving and other concerns.
“This feels too punitive,” Gonzales said. “It feels like too much of an overreach. There are other ways to achieve” safer streets.
The speed van program has been heralded by proponents as a cost-efficient improvement to roadway safety, which some, including Santa Fe police Chief Patrick Gallagher, say has deteriorated since 2013, when the previous program ended.
Harris, mentioning that the Santa Fe Police Department has 20 vacant officer positions, said the vans would provide a “multiplier effect” in speed enforcement, allowing city officers to
be deployed elsewhere.
But it also has had its share of detractors, who view the camera-equipped vehicles as ineffective and an overreach of surveillance. Others have found fault in the system for contesting the speeding tickets. Ten residents spoke against the speed van proposal Wednesday night, encouraging councilors to consider an alternative.
In 2012, a man so frustrated with the speed-enforcement system opened fire on one of the specially marked SUVs parked on Bishops Lodge Road.
The city’s previous automated traffic enforcement system — which employed police SUVs rather than vans — was launched in 2008 and wound down five years later as Arizona-based Redflex Traffic Systems, the private company that operated the program, became embroiled in a bribery scandal in other states that ultimately resulted in jail time for the CEO and multimillion-dollar fines.
The city allowed its contract with Redflex to lapse, and the program ended. Councilors have said there was no wrongdoing in local interactions with the company.
The measure to revive the speed-enforcement program does not make mention of Redflex. The company will have to submit a bid like any other group if it is interested in operating the system again, city spokesman Matt Ross said.
A Redflex spokesman did not answer a question seeking to gauge the company’s interest, writing in an email only that the company was “proud” to have provided services to Santa Fe.
The measure approved Wednesday, which directs City Manager Brian Snyder to reactivate the Santa Fe Traffic Operations Program, or STOP, is coupled with amendments to the city’s existing STOP ordinance that would cut in half the fines for first-time offenders and remove references to red-light cameras.
Those intersection cameras, approved by the council in 2008, were never implemented and will not be part of the city’s renewed efforts to enforce traffic laws via automation.
The resolution cites Santa Fe police statistics showing a rise in overall traffic accidents citywide each year since the program ended four years ago, as well as an increase in traffic complaints and requests for monitoring.
Under the renewed STOP, a first-time violator, photographed at 10 mph above the posted speed limit, will be fined $50. For each additional violation within a rolling two-year period from the most recent ticket, the fine will rise to $100.
In school and construction zones, violators caught traveling 5 mph above the speed limit will be fined $100; any repeat violation within two years will increase to $150.
An amendment to the ordinance struck language that would have allowed police to seize vehicles from violators with unpaid fines.
According to a financial analysis, revenues from ticketed traffic violations will total $400,000 in the current fiscal year. Those funds will cover the salary and benefits of the system operators, according to the resolution, as well as “new and or specialized equipment that permits officers to improve enforcement efforts and provide better services to the community.”
Leftover revenue will be split between the state and city.
Responding to some residents’ concerns that the program would be a revenue generator at the expense of low- or middle-income people, Ives said, “No, we’re actually targeting speeders.”
The vote was delayed a month after Harris flagged a new National Transportation Safety Board study that found speeding increases both the severity of injuries sustained in vehicle crashes and the risk of being involved in a crash.
The study said automated speed enforcement was “an effective but underused countermeasure.”