Photo radar's future uncertain

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Const. Ray Howes of the Winnipeg Police Service describes how a mobile photo radar unit works. The city still uses outdated film cameras for photo radar. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

Legislative change needed

"One obstacle to this transition is that a legislative amendment would be required to permit the use of digital equipment. The Winnipeg Police Service is reluctant to move forward with the transition to new equipment prior to a change in legislation being granted. If the legislative amendment is not approved and wet film is no longer available, then the program would no longer be able to operate."

-- Evaluation of the Photo Enforcement Safety Program of the City of Winnipeg, Final Report, July 2011 by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation

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Winnipeg's photo-radar program will be dead by late 2012 if the province does not approve a three-year-old request to convert to digital cameras, police sources said Friday.

The five-year contract city police have with ACS Public Sector Solutions, the company that operates the intersection and mobile speed cameras, expires November 2012. Without the province agreeing to a regulatory change needed to switch the cameras to digital, ACS will no longer be able to provide the service because the film used in the cameras will soon be unavailable.

"If I happened to be a cowardly province that wanted to kill this program quietly, I just wouldn't let them move into the 21st century," one source said.

Sources said the province is aware the clock is ticking on the old-style analogue or wet-film cameras, but to date has not moved on a police request to approve the change.

While the cameras operate under the authority of the Winnipeg Police Service, the province's Highway Traffic Act sets the rules for their operation.

Premier Greg Selinger said Friday his office had not been made aware of the police request.

"It's a discussion at the city level right now," he said. "We've seen nothing come to us in that regard."

Sources said the request appears to be hung up at the bureaucratic level in the province's Infrastructure and Transportation Department.

A second source said provincial officials have considered granting the request, but in exchange may ask police to make the mobile units more visible to drivers, by doing something like putting up a warning sign, so they slow down before being caught speeding by the unit's radar beam.

"There's been several meetings for the last three years with the province. It's a little dog-and-pony show. They admit that they're sensitive about photo enforcement, and it still does get a lot of attention, but no one is asking them to change a law for expansion. They're just asking for a technology change."

Correspondence between police and the Transportation Department, obtained by the Free Press, indicates discussions on changing to digital cameras started April 8, 2008, but has moved nowhere. A March 24, 2010, letter to police from John Spacek, an assistant deputy minister, said the request was taken to Transportation Minister Steve Ashton, but followup correspondence offers no indication when a decision will be made.

As of June, police were told a decision would be made in their favour if the government stayed in power in the Oct. 4 provincial election.

But an Oct. 20 letter to police from Spacek said while the province recognizes the police need for digital cameras, it gave no timeline on when the regulatory change would be made.

Winnipeg is the last jurisdiction in North America with photo radar that uses specialized wet film, sources said.

"This isn't the kind of stuff you get at London Drugs," another source said. "This is specially made by Kodak, and Kodak itself is on the way out."

The cost to switch to digital cameras would be covered by fine revenue and in time, would pay for itself, because not processing film would save money.

The approval process has taken so long, the digital equipment police first wanted to get is no longer produced.

The issue was detailed in a report last summer by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation on the city's photo-enforcement program, which has been on the streets since 2003 and was in development for several years prior.

"The Winnipeg Photo Enforcement Program currently uses analogue (wet film) technology for both mobile and intersection camera systems," the report said.

"This is a growing concern, as it has been in other jurisdictions, because few manufacturers are continuing to produce wet film. Digital cameras have become available and more jurisdictions with a photo-enforcement program have made this switch.

"In the event that agreement on a legislative amendment is not reached, and wet film is no longer available, then the program would not be able to continue operations."

Photo radar has been on the front-burner for the past week, with hundreds of drivers complaining about a photo-radar unit on Grant Avenue between Nathaniel and Cambridge streets nailing them for speeding. The unit began issuing tickets in late September.

Police say the camera's placement and the tickets it issued are accurate, but some drivers facing hefty fines say they're confident they could not have been travelling above the posted 50 km/h limit because they had just made the left turn from Nathaniel onto Grant.

A similar furor erupted two years ago when hundreds of motorists complained about police enforcing reduced speeds in construction zones.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 17, 2011 A3