ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – “Look for more cameras by the end of 2025.” With 20 now in place and more coming in the future, the City of Albuquerque said its speed camera program has made a difference in driver behavior.
Story continues below
“100%. Every single place where we put up a camera, we see a drop in speed. It’s pretty significant, up to eight to 10 miles per hour on average for a lot of these camera locations,” said Dan Mayfield with the Department of Municipal Development for the city of Albuquerque.
The city has issued more than 457,000 tickets to speeding drivers since 2022. From a safety standpoint, the city is seeing a change in driver behavior, especially on some of its busiest roads. The Gibson corridor average speeds are down by eight mph, and Central Ave. near Tingley is down by four mph. Other cameras are down by a couple miles per hour.
But not everyone who gets caught speeding pays the fine. In fact, less than half of tthe ickets are paid.
“So about 45% of the tickets we’ve issued have been paid. A good portion of those actually were really happy that we’re able to offer community service to people for whom a hundred-dollar fine is a lot of money,” said Mayfield.
Another thing to note, the tickets are civil citations, not normal speeding tickets that an officer of the law has to give you. The city is looking for a new vendor to install more cameras across Albuquerque, but each camera is pricey, costing the city $7,900 per camera, per month, to operate.
“We don’t really make money on these because all of this money is funneled right back into other road safety programs,” said Mayfield.
A common question the city gets is whether license plate covers work in fooling those speed cameras. The city said no, and they want to remind drivers that those are illegal. Also, city vehicles do get ticketed, and those drivers have to pay.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
