Please tell us that sneaky Tacoma speed-monitoring camera is gone for good
Question: Looks like they took down the old speed-monitoring camera along East Bay Street in Tacoma. What’s that weird gray box with which it was replaced? — Kenny
Answer: That, dear speeders, uh, we mean readers, is a brand new speed-monitoring camera.
“Yes, speed is still being monitored at that location,” said Loretta Cool, Tacoma police spokeswoman.
Dang it all to heck.
Why the new equipment?
The City of Tacoma earlier this year hired a new vendor for its photo red and photo radar programs.
For the uninitiated, those programs use automated cameras to monitor intersections for red-light runners or stretches of street, including school zones, for speeders. Think Big Brother with access to a ticket book and your home mailing address.
SENSYS America Inc. won a five-year contract, taking over from Redflex, as former TNT scribe Candice Ruud first reported in June.
Joy of joys, SENSYS promises better technology capable of “tracking multiple vehicles across six lanes of travel, capturing exact speed and position at 20 times per center,” Police Chief Don Ramsdell wrote in a memorandum touting the new vendor.
The East Bay Street location is notorious for its stealth and efficiency.
The camera is at a spot where River Road, aka state Route 167, transitions from freeway speeds to city street speeds. It’s also around a little bend, making the camera tough to spot.
We here at Traffic Q&A headquarters sometimes forget about it and must pull a spill-the-coffee braking maneuver to, uh, adjust our speed to the proper reading (35 miles per hour) when traveling into T-town from that direction.
The Bay Street camera handed out 16,646 citations last year, according to Redflex data posted on the Tacoma police website.
That’s by far tops in Tacoma. The second highest was at East 38th Street and McKinley Avenue, where the camera monitoring eastbound traffic caught 3,285 scofflaws in 2017, according to Redflex.
Proponents cite decreased collisions where the devices are deployed. There’s some evidence to support that.
In 2015, eight collisions were reported in the 2990 block of East Bay Street, according to Redflex. Last year, there were five.
“It is a bad curve to speed on. Just so you know ...,” Cool reminded us the other day.
Yes, yes, point taken.
