In the first round of funding from the province’s newly formed Road Safety Initiatives Fund, the City of Greater Sudbury secured $546,000 toward traffic-calming initiatives.
This is the first of two rounds of funding the province opened up in the wake of prohibiting the use of municipal automated speed enforcement cameras last week.
Funding totals $210 million divided into two rounds of funding, of which the first was $42 million, “in immediate funding to support traffic-calming measures in school zones and community safety zones that previously deployed municipal speed cameras.”
Municipalities will be invited to apply for a share of the balance early next year, for which the province has not outlined specific limits to municipalities.
“The city will be required to outline how the initial funding was used and provide information on (automated speed enforcement) revenues,” a city spokesperson told Sudbury.com. “The province will use this information to determine the remaining portion of our final allocation, but no caps or thresholds for the next round have been communicated.”
Between becoming active on March 22, 2024, and the end of the year, the cameras resulted in the issuance of 12,796 tickets in Greater Sudbury, with a total set fine sum of $1,344,237 and a net revenue to the city after expenses of $753,003.
Year-to-date, by the time the province cancelled municipal automated speed enforcement programs on Nov. 14, the cameras were estimated to have pulled $2.4 million, of which the city anticipated approximately 20 per cent will not be recovered, leaving $1.9 million to pay for operating costs. It’s unclear what the net municipal revenue will end up being.
In cancelling automated speed enforcement, the province included language prohibiting suppliers and vendors from seeking costs from municipalities due to early termination of contract, which city Linear Infrastructure Services director Joe Rocca said earlier this month the city’s legal team is working through.
Greater Sudbury city council and the Greater Sudbury Police Service board and leadership have all advocated for the cameras to remain in place, with GSPS board chair Gerry Lougheed describing the province cancelling the program last week as “one of the dumbest things.”