Barrie’s speed cameras have shifted gears again.
They are being moved soon to two new locations on city streets.
The automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras most recently had been on northbound Essa Road near Timothy Christian School, and westbound on Ardagh Road in the vicinity of Heritage Baptist Church, beginning at the end of February.
“They have now been removed from these locations and are in the process of being relocated, calibrated,” Michelle Banfield, the city’s executive director of development services, told BarrieToday. “Once the cameras are live, the city’s website will be updated.”
The new locations will be eastbound Cundles Road East, at Livingstone Street near St. Joseph’s Catholic High School and Frere Andre Catholic Elementary School, and southbound on Leacock Drive, at Gibbon Drive near St. Mary’s Catholic School.
There’s also a new 'municipal speed camera coming soon' sign on Little Avenue, in front of Assikinack Public School.
Barrie’s ASE cameras were first located eastbound on Big Bay Point Road, near Willow Landing and St. Michael the Archangel Catholic elementary schools, and southbound on Anne Street North, near Portage View and Nouvelle-Alliance schools.
ASE cameras nailed 9,240 vehicles for speeding at these first two Barrie locations, with an average ticket fine of $90, from Dec. 1, 2023 until Feb. 18, 2024, according to a city memo. It also says 4,563 speeding tickets were issued on Big Bay Point Road and 4,677 on Anne Street North.
Rodger Bates, the city’s manager of court services, has said that number climbed to at least 13,000 speeding tickets by the end of March.
The same city memo also says cameras in the first two locations were successful in significantly reduced speeding there, when compared to the use of flashing 40-km/h lights. During peak school hours speeds were reduced by 12 km/h at the Big Bay Point Road location and 13 km/h at the Anne Street location. This reduction is compared to speeds during peak school hours when the flashing 40 km/h lights were in use.
ASE is a system that uses a camera and a speed-measuring device to detect and capture images of the licence plates of vehicles travelling faster than the posted speed limit in school or community safety zones.
The ASE fines go into Provincial Offences Court revenues for the municipality where the charges are laid, and are treated no differently than the charges that would be laid by a police service.
The speeding penalty is a fine, but tickets issued through ASE don’t result in demerit points. The fine is based on by how much the driver is exceeding the speed limit. The city has said ASE speeding tickets will arrive within 30 days after the violation occurs to the vehicle’s owner.
Barrie’s cameras are to be rotated through different community safety zones every few months.
And there are plenty of choices.
The city has 27 community safety zones. They are established by municipal councils through a bylaw, and cover road areas where there is a higher risk to, or concern for, drivers, pedestrians, cyclists and/or others who share the space.
Highway Traffic Act fines, including speeding, are doubled in community safety zones and many community safety zones are located close to schools. Barrie has 81 sections of road designated as community safety zones in accordance with the community safety zones bylaw.
City staff have said the ASE cameras program required $300,000 of initial investment — in staff, security, computers, technology, software and the cameras themselves $100,000 of that total. Yearly operational costs are $370,000, staff have said.
Speeding fines cover a portion of the ASE program’s costs. Local Authority Services (LAS), the business services arm of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), and the city signed an agreement last summer that LAS will initially fund two provincial offences officers who will process speed-camera violations in Barrie.
