The City of Cold Lake has decided photo radar just isn’t cutting it in the community. City Councillors voted not to continue the Global Traffic Group program, which will have its contract end in October. A few factors were considered in the decision, including statistics and revenue the city would collect from fines.
Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland says bad habits are hard to break for drivers and photo radar just wasn’t cutting those habits down.
“The data indicated that we didn’t see a real drop-off in fewer fines. People are still having these speeding or stopping infractions.”
Some councillors had raised questions about the revenue of fines being distributed. With the current system, Cold Lake would only see about $58,000 of an estimated $600,000 in total fines issued. The rest of the cut ended up with the Alberta Government and Global Traffic Group.
Mayor Copeland says from a fiscal perspective, it just didn’t make sense to try to continue.
“For every eight dollars in fines, the city gets a dollar return. We’re going to revisit it in the Fall. We won’t renew the contract. We’ll look at our options.”
The city says any funds taken in on the program will go to improve the school zones they were intended to keep safe. Copeland says one of the future options might be the hiring of more bylaw officers to help curb bad driving habits.