| Date: | February 23, 2021 |
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On February 23, 2021, the Buffalo Common Council Legislation Committee discussed the School Zone Speed Camera program. PPG Community Researcher Colleen Kristich shared the following remarks during the session.
Good afternoon, at the last Legislation Committee meeting, Peter Rizzo presented his research on the school zone speed camera program and found many problems. I appreciate the difficulty of the issue, because we all want children to be safe, and just removing the cameras without making other changes might jeopardize children’s safety. So I wondered, if the cameras were removed, what specific changes could be made in each of these zones to calm traffic and keep kids safe?
I took a closer look at Peter's research and was able to separate the 20 school zones with cameras into four categories:
High-crash means there are more than 10 crashes per year and high-volume means more than 15,000 cars pass per day. High-crash high-volume zones pose the highest risk to students and low crash low volume zones have the lowest risk. Based on this, there are 4 zones with cameras that are high risk and 8 that are low risk, with the other 8 school zones in between.
One of the highest risk schools, for example, is St. Joseph’s University School on Main St which has almost 13 crashes a year and nearly 27,000 cars pass per day. Contrast that with Bennett Park Montessori on Clinton St which has only 2 crashes per year and around 3,000 cars pass per day. That’s a difference of 6 times as many crashes and 9 times as much traffic at St. Joe’s compared to Bennett Park. Not only are there very different traffic patterns at these schools, the street itself is very different too.
Bennett Park Montessori is on a fairly quiet, 2-lane street across from a park in a residential neighborhood, and is the type of place where speed bumps or raised crosswalks would make a lot of sense. However, it has none of these safety measures--but it does have a speed camera. St. Joseph’s is on Main Street, which might be more appropriate for rumble strips, a pedestrian refuge, curb extensions, or other physical or visual improvements. Both are in need of design changes before resorting to a punitive enforcement strategy.
These are just 2 examples of the very different needs and considerations of each school zone. The one-size-fits-all approach of slapping up a speed camera in these school zones does not make sense, especially if the zone is lacking basic street infrastructure.
The Council should end the current speed camera demonstration program and look at each school zone one by one to understand the options and needs of each zone; based on publicly available traffic and crash data, and through consulting with the parents and community members who live in each zone. Knowing that each school zone has different traffic patterns, different neighborhoods and different design needs means that each zone must be considered individually: a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t work for Buffalo.