This is the 25 mph sign that some drivers don’t see or ignore when going west on Santiam Road after turning from Pacific Boulevard.
Traffic cameras at four Albany intersections yielded 747 tickets last month, the vast majority of them for speed violations. The average speed on all those tickets was 35.1 miles an hour.
The camera flashes actually went off far more often. They recorded 2,789 “events,” but most of those resulted in no one being cited.
“Not all events end up as a ticket,” Police Chief Marcia Harnden explained in an email. “Some might be rejected based on a driver mismatch, bad read on a license plate, or other reason why the officer did not issue a ticket.”
At my request, the chief this week sent me a table with traffic camera statistics for October.
The most productive cameras in terms of tickets issued were the two on Santiam Road at Geary Street. They led the list with more than 1,100 “events” and 287 tickets issued. The average speed of 184 westbound drivers cited was 37.1 mph. In the other direction, 103 drivers were clocked at an average of 36.9.
The cameras in the school zone on North Albany Road recorded 284 speeding citations in October. The average was 34.1 mph in one direction and 33 in the other. (I can’t tell from the report which direction was which.)
The North Albany cameras also yielded four tickets for an average speed of nearly 52 mph, and five others where the average speed was under 29 mph. Those appear to have been red-light violations.
Harnden told me lower speeds on the report usually indicate a red-light violation. “Also, we are beginning to see the average speed overall drop on North Albany Road, which is what we want. Getting people to slow down coming through the school zone is the goal.”
My guess is that the four red-light tickets with an average speed of 52 mph were issued before 7 a.m. or late at night, when North Albany Road is often empty. Any time there is traffic in the school zone, going 50 is impossible.
At Queen Avenue and Elm Street, the city reported 139 tickets with an average speed of 36.4 mph going west and 35 going east.
At Queen Avenue and Geary Street, the intersection that has had cameras the longest, the October ticket total was a mere 28. The southbound camera caught 20 violations with an average speed of 21 mph. The low average suggests that the 20 violations included a lot of slow-moving right turns on red.
As I reported, the municipal court dismissed two speeding tickets Wednesday when the city could not prove with calibration records that the cameras on North Albany Road were precise. One of the drivers told me his speedometer read 23 and he was cited for 31 mph. He later remembered he had put oversize tires on his truck without changing the speedometer.
I asked Harnden if the dismissal of tickets would have an effect on the photo radar program. “No change in the program,” the chief replied. (hh)
The westbound traffic camera on Santiam Road at Geary Street didn’t go off while I was watching it on Friday afternoon, Nov. 14, 2025.
I’m glad this revenue raising tool is working for the city. Don’t believe this is about safety.
What’s wrong with it being both safety and revenue.
I say nothing. Not. a. thing.
But it is a really, REALLY bad look for this town!
… and they are getting away with it.
Nothing wrong with it… Just theres no data to support it improving safety *yet*. For that to be the case there would need to be a reduction in accidents, injury and or deaths in said intersections. 2 important things to note is the police chief said speeds are going down but didnt mention a reduction in accidents injury or deaths. Is that on purpose? Can’t say but i would assume if there was a reduction in accidents that would be mentioned.
Lastly when I complained on an hh post prior to the cameras going live a city council member showed me a data sheet they used from the queen geary intersection to support expanding the cameras. In said data guess what. There was no measurable consistent reduction in accidents (data didnt provide injury or deaths but has to have an accident for those right). Now maybe I was given the wrong data or not all the data or the data itself is wrong…. but based on what I was provided accidents and citations went up and down year over year with no pattern or correlation whatsoever.
THEY NEED THE EXTRA..$ 2,000,000 FOR THE WATER STREET UNDERGROUND POWER LINES….OH MY..
Watch your speed and lights you won’t get a ticket. I am all for those cameras. I feel we need more of them at major intersections. I have almost been hit by red light runners.
Following a car driving 20 miles under the listed speed limit (40 when school is NOT in session) , I wondered if the city is also giving citations at N.Albany Rd. for going too slow? Isn’t that also a traffic violation? Although it is frustrating for the other drivers, I guess it isn’t exactly unsafe to be driving too slow. And there are more important issues in our world, so I can let it go.
Eugene and Springfield had to turn off their cameras.Why not Albany?
The Eugene cameras were surveillance cameras the read and recorded car types and plate numbers. They were not photo radar speed enforcement cameras.
Photo radar cams record the same thing. How else would they know where to send the ticket? I’m sure they could be configured not to flash and be used for surveillance purposes. Maybe not continuous video, but a shot every couple-few seconds. At least until the “camera upgrade”.
I remember my 5th grade teacher saying how thankful we should be for not living in a Communist country. The reason being, that in a CC, the police will stop you and ask for your papers. They are a POLICE STATE, she continued! She was a nun BTW.
Why is the speed limit on road behind petco a 25 mph zone?
I looked at the Oregon crash data maps for the four intersections and surrounding streets for the past ten years, from 2014 to 2023 combined. Each crash is marked with a dot on the map — red for fatality, orange for injury, and gray for property damage only.
While nearby streets such as Pacific Blvd have so many dots that they look like a dotted line, the only photo-enforced intersections with more than a few dots are Queen and Geary, followed by Queen and Elm. The others have just a few over the ten year period. Because I selected all data (and there is a lot that can be filtered out) the criteria for reporting an injury is not defined. None of them showed a fatality.
Given the remarkably large number of tickets issued versus the sparse number of crashes, one might conclude that the purpose of the cameras is not safety but rather revenue from fines.
Those with enough patience for the slow performance of the data maps can do their own inspection at https://www.oregon.gov/odot/Data/Pages/Crash-Data-Viewer.aspx.