Newark implemented a speed monitoring system on Hillside Road.
City Council passed an ordinance establishing a speed camera program in July after several fatal crashes and injuries on Main Street. Council originally expected the cameras to be in place as early as October.
City Manager Tom Coleman said it ended up taking longer than planned, but the camera is on location now and will go live March 24. That will start a 30-day warning period. Once that’s up, the system will start issuing penalties.
“We only have one camera, and we're going to move it…” Coleman said. “Let's say there's 26 of them. If there are 26 locations and we leave the camera in place for two weeks at each location, it'll take a full year to go around all the locations.”
Coleman said he and his colleagues decided to start on Hillside Road because the city owns the land next to it and it’s a lower volume street.
That will allow Coleman’s team to work through the kinks before moving to higher priority areas identified by City Council, including Capitol Trail and the Stafford Avenue.
Putting a monitoring system on Main Street is a separate project, Coleman added. For now, the city made changes to signal timing, striping and signage on Main Street.
Coleman said the speed camera is an additional step to address traffic safety.
“My personal opinion is that in the long term, the right solution is to change the road geometry in a way to make it so people don't speed on the road, they don't feel comfortable speeding on the road,” Coleman said. “But that takes a lot of time and money, and it's not something that can be done overnight.”
Coleman an his colleagues don’t currently plan on installing a camera system on Main Street, but have implemented other changes like lowering the threshold for speeding violations from 11 to 6 miles per hour over the limit.
