Schools
Pilot Program Will Put Speed Cameras in NYC School Zones
Five-year test to kick off in September.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday that he had signed legislation to start a new pilot program to protect the city's school children from speeding cars.
The program will be set up in 20 New York City school zones at first, testing the effectiveness of cameras at catching speeding drivers barreling recklessly through school-adjacent corridors.
"This law will allow New York City to undertake a pilot program to see if using speed cameras in school zones is an effective way of preventing accidents and protecting both pedestrians and drivers," Cuomo said. "These cameras will supplement efforts by law enforcement to root out speeding violations in these protected areas, and encourage drivers to use caution when driving through school zones."
The program will kick off in September, and is scheduled to last for five years. Tickets issued by speed cameras will cost $50 per violation and will be handled by the New York City Parking Violations Bureau.
During the five year test, the city and state will be looking at a number of factors to determine how to expand it, including:
- the number of crashes in monitored and non-monitored school zones.
- the number of speeding violations in monitored and non-monitored zones.
- the overall effectiveness of penalty collection.
"Innovative traffic engineering and aggressive enforcement have resulted in traffic fatalities in New York City reaching all-time record lows in the past decade. But speeding remains the single greatest contributing factor in traffic fatalities in New York City," the mayor said.
There is no information yet on which school zones will be included in the program.
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