The school zone on North Albany Road cost 956 drivers more than $165,000 in speeding tickets from July through October. (The photo was taken a little after noon on Sept. 18, 2025.)
In case you’re keeping track, here’s an update on the money angle of Albany’s expanded use of traffic cameras that watch for speed violations and drivers running red lights.
Jeanna Yeager, the finance director for the City of Albany, last week sent me information on the revenue the city received from the traffic cameras since the start of the fiscal year.
One thing stands out: Over the first four months of the fiscal year, Albany drivers paid more than a quarter-million dollars in camera tickets, most of that amount for speeding.
Here’s the table covering data from July through October. The table shows not the total number of tickets issued, but only the number of tickets fully paid. Usually there’s a time lag between when a citation is issued by the police and the time the resulting fine is paid.
The net revenue shown, Yeager explained, is the amount of money going to the city after the required payments to the state, county and vendor.
In addition to $20 per paid ticket, Verra Mobility, the vendor, also gets $3,000 per camera system ($6,000 per intersection) per month.
As you can see from the table, the city’s expanded camera operation is mostly aimed at driving faster than the speed limit.
Most of the money comes from the two locations where there is a drastic drop in the posted speed limit: from 40 t0 20 mph in the North Albany Road school zone, and from 35 mph on Pacific Boulevard to 25 mph on Santiam Road at Geary Street.
By themselves, the number of tickets and the amount of paid fines say nothing about whether there’s any measurable increase in safety.
There were no crashes in the North Albany school zone before the cameras were installed, so the cameras can’t be said to be the cause of the lack of crashes now. (hh)
In an ideal world, every law-enforcement policy decision would be made from the perspective of “Is this is actually likely to improve public safety?”
People are so busy complaining and campaining against taxes to prop up ODOT, but they don’t seem to be anywhere near as furious with APD finding quite the taxpayer funded loophole.
I’m not against safety in school zones and slowing down during school hours or following the letter of the law. I am however abosulutely appalled at the setup of the zone in N Albany. The dual school situation makes it easy for many to get caught up in bright lights that would make Pennywise the Dancing Clown blush. New residents moving into the area and visiting family easily fall victim to the camera’s unceasing gaze as they are drawn in by a false feeling of being on the right side of the law after reading signs stating “no school today”, but alas only one of two schools are void of students that day. Welcome to N Albany, and don’t forget to smile for the camera!
As they say ignorance of the law is never an excuse, but I bet a lot of people are feeling like they’ve been setup and robbed in broad daylight. Shame on APD. Shame.
maybe just maybe if they had not been speeding something might turn out diffrent for them
How come “failure to obey…” is $265 everyplace except N. Albany where it averages $250.91. Maybe refunds are beginning to start for those who have appealed because the devices were used without proper calibration documentation?
WHICH city Employee is going to step up and admit they failed?
Why can’t people just admit that driving on North Albany Road was just too fast? Why can’t people just slow down for the quarter mile where the cameras are? Own your speed people!
Yes, do slow down, we don’t want any accidents out there. Oh wait, there were no accidents before they put the cameras. So the only victim was the people of North Albany who got robbed for 250k.
nobody is getting robbed if there not speeding ………………………..
How about they use that money to install some adequate school zone signs with flashing lights indicating when the school zone is active? These are not uncommon and obviously needed there.
roads work best when consistent and predictable – like lot of things in life. what is happening with roads in north albany demonstrate how city and road change over time. this road now goes through two school zones, church, residential areas, grange, shopping center and leads up to gibson where 100 plus homes being built. also new homes on thornton lake drive. soon more traffic will be on this road. perhaps time to address if road still serve purpose of moving people fast from town to north area? perhaps predictable and consistent speed limit on this road is needed – 25 mph so a 20 mph school zone is not such a wild ride for some. so what if add two minutes to your commute – you won’t have pesky camera or ever have to pay for fine again. problem solved. and you can add as many flashing lights and signs as you want.
Albany has way too many red lights runners. These are not people that get caught in the middle of a light but the green light to go for car and you still have cars going through the red light should be ticketed. Another place a camera should be considered is Waverly Park and Old Salem, Cars coming across this intersection and turning left onto Old Salem run the red light and the cars on Old Salem have a clear green light. This is blatantly violating laws.
I so agree, I drive Pacific to Ne Albany and at the light at Waverly and Pacific I constantly have to wait for at least three cars go through turning left to Waverly from Pacific while I have the green
Thank you for pointing out there had been no previous accidents in the North Albany area where the cameras have been located. It is pretty difficult to make the claim that this program is a public safety issue. Did the city do a traffic speed study in the intersections in question before implementing this program? Is there a traffic engineer who studied the issue and deemed these actions necessary? If so, was it someone who had no financial interest in the outcome?
If there were no crashes at the NA intersection prior to the red light camera, why and who decided we needed a camera at that location? What was/is the criteria used by the city to determine the need for a red light camera at any of the locations?
Do the fees include the administration costs for the city such as the extra people employed to verify and send out the tickets?
No, city admin costs come off the net revenue.
If they’re making that kind of insane money Hasso, I hope you do a monthly or quarterly check on this. Then when the city cries they have no money for roads or whatever, this can be pointed out. Or do you know what all this money is earmarked for?
Many, many, many school areas
Have flashing lights, demand your
Council make public works install flashing lights, the city has made enough money by now, problem solved, then there should be no complaints.
YES! THIS! Keep bringing it up. We need flashing lights there. City council needs to make sure it happens!
best yet, since there has been a substanial amount of development up in north albany, development has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in street sdc’s, and according to state statue you have to use monies to enhance intersections that have major development thru it, i believe that the school intersection would qualify for flashing lights, i would dare any city staff to call me out on this as we have many examples of this, just put the falshing lights up when school is in session, and re-word the signs, light your councilpeople always says ” development should pay their way”
Just about half of the wealth extracted from the community with this program is lost in fees, with no measured increase in safety. What a big waste. We need our money to stay in our community.
Hasso, is there any serious consideration to changing the speed limit on both NA road and Gibson Hill? The speed limit on Santiam is slower than these roads. Seems to me that the speed limit should be no more than 35 mph throughout.