Speed camera tickets start at 6 mph over limit
Mayor counting on the revenue to help close $1.2B deficit
With 2021 upon us, Mayor Lori Lightfoot will soon end Chicago motorists’ carefree days of driving up to 9miles per hour over the posted speed limit.
The city will start issuing tickets in the new year to people automated speed cameras catch driving between 6 and 9mph too fast. Lightfoot is counting on millions of dollars in new revenue in 2021 from the $35 tickets to help close a $1.2 billion deficit.
But city officials are so far offering few specifics on when and how the stricter enforcement will be rolled out, beyond saying speeders will receive a written warning in the mail after the first time a camera catches them exceeding the new threshold, before tickets for subsequent violations.
That warning period won’t start on Jan. 1. Chicago Department of Transportation officials haven’t said how soon after that it will kick in. Unless otherwise marked, the general speed limit in Chicago defaults to 30 mph.
The speed camera change is among several new taxes and fees Lightfoot included in her 2021 budget.
Other changes include a 3-cent per-gallon gas tax increase that will be added to fill-ups starting Jan. 1 and a bump in a computer lease tax.
The city will install 96 new parking pay boxes. That will mean about 750 spots that have been free, in parts of downtown, Lincoln Square, Old Town, Lakeview and other North Side neighborhoods, will require drivers to pay to park.
The money raised from those meters is slated to offset the annual payment the city has to make to Chicago Parking Meters LLC for meters taken out of commission, part of the much-despised 2008 meter lease.
A $94 million property tax hike is also in the offing, though that increase won’t appear on property owners’ tax bills until 2022 because of the normal one-year payment lag.
And there’s a plan to refinance $501 million in city debt for the 2021 budget, which will provide a jolt of new revenue next year but likely cost taxpayers more later.
The speeding ticket change— part of Lightfoot’s 2021 plan to raise an additional $38 million from fines, forfeitures and penalties — has drawn the ire of community groups and some aldermen because tickets can hit workingclass residents hard.
The city has had the power to ticket cars going as little as 6 mph over the limit since Mayor Rahm Emanuel started the speed camera programin 2013. But Emanuel never took full advantage of it.
Currently, only those caught driving 10 mph above the limit get the $35 tickets.
Tickets of $100 are issued
to drivers caught speeding by 11 mph or more above the posted limit.
As a candidate, Lightfoot promised to reform the city’s fines and fees program, saying it was regressive and focused on generating revenue, not safety.
“The red-light camera program was sold to Chicagoans as a public safety solution, but it’s really been about revenue — and those fines fall disproportionately on people of color,” Lightfoot said at the time.
And shortly after taking office in 2019, the mayor shepherded through the City Council a series of reforms to the city’s fines and fees system that ended the practice of suspending the driver’s licenses of people who haven’t paid parking tickets, reduced vehicle
sticker penalties and created a six-month payment plan to give those with ticket debt more time to pay
But in justifying lowering the speed camera ticket threshold, she tried to make a distinction between speeding tickets and “nonmoving violations.”
“Unlike fines for nonmoving violations that did fall disproportionately on Black and brown Chicagoans, and drove people into bankruptcy, people have control over whether or not they speed,” Lightfoot said in October, after the Tribune reported that her budget included the lower speed camera limits.