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Landmark day • Sunday, January 22, 2006

January 22, 2006: Speed Cameras Switch On Along the Pima Freeway

Scottsdale puts speed cameras on a state freeway, the first such program in the country; crashes fall, and the argument over who it was really for begins.

Illustrated plaque for January 22, 2006 in Scottsdale history JANUARY 22 2006 THE RESORT METROPOLIS

What happened

On January 22, 2006, under a nine-month demonstration the Scottsdale City Council approved on October 25, 2005, six fixed speed cameras began operating on about 7.8 miles of the Loop 101 Pima Freeway through Scottsdale. It was the first use of fixed-site photo enforcement on a freeway in Arizona and, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says, the first fixed speed cameras on a major U.S. highway. The demonstration ran until October 23, 2006. The city switched the cameras back on in 2007, and the state Department of Public Safety operated them from July 2007 until construction removed them in June 2008.

Why it matters

The state's evaluation found average speeds down about 9 miles an hour and crashes down 44 to 54 percent, and the state later put speed cameras on freeways statewide. The program also started an argument that ran through Arizona politics for years: whether speed cameras are about safety or about revenue.

The demonstration

On October 25, 2005 the city council approved a nine-month demonstration of fixed speed cameras on its stretch of the Pima Freeway, the state highway the city had fought over and decorated in the 1990s. Six cameras went up along about 7.8 miles. On January 22, 2006 they began photographing drivers; for the first month they sent warnings, and from February 22, The State Press reported, tickets started at $157 for drivers caught at 76 miles an hour or more. The State Press also reported that the cameras’ vendor, Redflex, would recover its costs from the city’s share of the fines.

The city framed it as safety. “We have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Scottsdale,” Councilman Kevin Osterman told The State Press in 2005. “Nothing else is working.” Some state legislators saw money. “This is a tremendous cash cow for the city,” said Sen. Dean Martin, a Phoenix Republican. “I want live officers on the freeway.” A bill to ban cameras on state highways failed.

What it did

The demonstration ended on October 23, 2006. Arizona State University engineers led by Simon Washington evaluated it for the state. The final report, as the Auditor General summarized it, found average speeds at the camera sites down about 9 miles an hour, total crashes down 44 to 54 percent and injury crashes down 28 to 48 percent, worth an estimated $16.5 million to $17.1 million a year. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found an 88 percent drop in the odds of drivers going 11 miles an hour or more over the limit, and public support for the cameras on that road.

The council voted to turn the cameras back on in January 2007, by 5 to 1 according to The State Press, and they ran again from February to June. Governor Janet Napolitano then had the Department of Public Safety take them over; it operated them from July 2007 until June 2008, when freeway construction removed them. The state’s own freeway camera program, which followed, ended in 2010. The 2000s politics chapter sets the cameras beside the decade’s other arguments.