The School Camera Speeding Tickets Are the New Car Tax, but Super Regressive

It’s about time we had some solid facts about the new automated cameras that have generated an estimated twenty thousand speeding tickets since they were installed near Providence schools late last year. So I sought out and analyzed the data on the first 18 thousand tickets issued from December 13, 2017 to March 3, 2018. Does the evidence support proponents’ contention that the cameras are an important policy tool to protect our children? Or does it bolster the claims of aggrieved citizens that the ninety-five-dollar tickets are nothing more than a municipal money grab?

Here’s what I found. The overwhelming fraction of tickets were issued at times and on days when few if any students were actually entering or exiting their schools. In fact, the number of tickets dropped off markedly at precisely those times when school gets in or lets out. The financial burden of the tickets has fallen predominantly on vehicle owners in the neighborhoods surrounding the schools. On average, these neighborhoods tend to house families with lower incomes. Far and away the richest neighborhood of the city, by contrast, has been almost completely spared.

Relationship between volume of speed camera tickets and 2016 median family income among 12 contiguous zip codes overlapping the boundaries of the city of Providence RI. The darker the color, the higher is the volume of tickets. For example, the zip codes 02908 and 02904, both shaded dark green, with respective volumes of 2,569 and 2,528 tickets, had respective median family incomes of $43,906 and $44,535 in 2016. The volume data are based on the zip codes of vehicle registration for a total of 18,109 school speed camera tickets issued during December 13, 2017 through March 3, 2018. The estimates of median family income are based upon U.S. census data. The red lines show the boundaries of the city of Providence.

How I (Finally) Got the Data

On March 5, 2018, I asked the City of Providence to release a computerized database of speeding tickets issued under its newly installed “automated school-zone-speed-enforcement system.” For each ticket, I requested the date and time of the violation, the school zone of the violation, and the zip code of the recipient’s mailing address.

As a seasoned veteran of numerous battles over the disclosure of public records, I knew that the city had exactly the data I was requesting, as each municipality implementing the speed zone cameras is required by state law (R. I. Gen. Laws § 31-41.3) to maintain a computerized database of individual violations. I also knew from the state law that the recipients of the tickets were the registered owners of the vehicles identified by the speed cameras (or, in some case, the individuals leasing the vehicles).

For this analysis, I decided not to request the full addresses, or even the street names of the ticket recipients. Under the public records law (R. I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-3(h)), the city had to supply the electronic data in the format that I requested unless it could show that it would be “unduly burdened in providing such data.” Since the database undoubtedly had the information on the zip codes of the registered owners in a readily accessible format, it would be hard for the city to complain that it was unduly burdensome to produce it.

The public records law ordinarily requires a government agency to release the requested documents within 10 business days. But the city, as usual, took advantage of a loophole in the law and gave itself an extra 20 business days to produce a file that, in all likelihood, took a programmer no more than a half-hour to create.

Speed Camera Tickets by Time of Day

The database contained a total of 18,109 school speed camera tickets, issued between December 13, 2017 and March 3, 2018. The breakdown of tickets by school zone was as follows:

The first entry in the table corresponds to a speed camera located at Daniel Avenue between Harlam and Ethan Streets, according to the city’s press release, while the second is on Peace Street between Elmwood Avenue and Bucklin Street. The third entry corresponds to a camera situated on Thurbers Avenue between Eddy Street and Prairie Avenue, at or near the Roger Williams Middle School and the Juanita Sanchez Complex. The fourth is located on Charles Street between Silver Spring Street and Branch Avenue, at or near the Hopkins Junior High School. The last two entries appear to refer to two distinct locations along Mount Pleasant Avenue at or near Mount Pleasant High School.

Shown below is a breakdown of tickets by time of day and camera location. Because the Daniel Avenue and Peace Street sites yielded so few speeding tickets, I have combined them into a single category.

The data in the bar graph below show that the vast majority of tickets were issued at times other than the regular arrival of students in the morning and the regular departure of students in the afternoon. The middle schools and high schools where cameras have been located generally start at 7:55 A.M. and let out at 2:30-2:45 P.M. Yet the peak times for speeding violations were from 9:00 A.M. – 1:59 P.M. and from 3:00 – 4:59 P.M.

Number of school speed camera tickets by location and time of day, December 13, 2017 through March 3, 2018. The label 6 A.M. refers to the hour from 6:00 – 6:59 A.M. The numbers of tickets for Daniel and Peace Streets have been combined, as they were quite small. The analysis is based on a total of 18,109 school speed camera tickets.

Further inspection of the graph above suggests that the regular arrival and dismissal times correspond to fewer violations. That is exactly what one would predict if drivers were slowing down in school zones when there was visible student activity.  To test this possibility, I looked at the percent distribution of tickets by hour on Fridays, when school gets out early at about 1:20 P.M., as compared to all other school days, that is, Mondays through Thursdays. In fact, the proportion of violations on Fridays dipped during the 1:00-1:59 P.M. hour, while the proportion of violations on the other school days dipped during the 2:00-2:59 P.M. hour.

Percentage distribution of school camera speed tickets by day of the week and time of day, December 13, 2017 through March 3, 2018. The label 6 A.M. refers to the hour from 6:00 – 6:59 A.M. Tickets issued on Saturdays have been excluded.

The graph below shows the number of speeding tickets by 5-minute intervals in the afternoon hours at Mt. Pleasant High, which gets out at 2:35 P.M. Monday through Friday. The total number of violations plummets after 2:15 P.M., bottoming out at 6 during the 5-minute interval starting at 2:40 P.M. With a total of 52 weekdays, that comes to about one violation every 9 days. The unavoidable conclusion is that traffic slowed during dismissal time, even though the speed cameras had been installed without advance notice or warning.

Number of speed camera tickets by 5-minute intervals during the afternoon hours at Mt. Pleasant High during Mondays through Fridays. The first interval is from 1:00-1:04 P.M., the second from 1:05-1:09 P.M., and so forth. The analysis was based on a total of 1,989 tickets issued for this site from 1:00-3:59 P.M. during the 52 weekdays from December 17, 2017 through March 2, 2018.

Speed Camera Tickets by Day of Week

The graph below shows the breakdown of the number of tickets by day of the week. The height of each bar corresponds to the number of tickets issued. Inside each bar, I show the number of days, as well as the average number of tickets per day, rounded off to the nearest whole number. There were fewer Mondays during the period of analysis because three holidays fell on Mondays.

The graph shows that a significant number of tickets were issued on Saturdays, when there are some extracurricular activities, but no regular school hours. The graph further supports the conclusion that the vast majority of tickets were issued at times other than the regular arrival and departure of students.

Number of school speed camera tickets by day of the week, December 13, 2017 through March 3, 2018 . The height of each bar shows the total number of tickets. Within each bar, I show the number of days and the average number of tickets per day. For example, there were 11 Saturdays with a total of 2,595 tickets, or an average of 235.9 tickets per day. Three school holidays fell on a Monday. The analysis is based on a total of 18,109 school speed camera tickets.

Speed Camera Tickets by Zip Code and Family Income

I next looked at the zip codes of the addresses at which the vehicles were registered. I found that 83 percent of the tickets (that is, 15,020) were issued to vehicles in one of 29 zip codes, all but one of which were situated in the local area around Providence, with the first three digits 027, 028 or 029. (The only exception was zip code 74134, which likely corresponded to an interstate trucking firm operating out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.)

The map below shows the numbers of tickets issued for each zip code in the immediate area around Providence. Each full black square corresponds to 100 tickets. For example, zip code 02908, which contains Mt. Pleasant High School, had 2,569 tickets, represented on the map by 25 full black squares and one fractional square. Zip code 02904, which contains Hopkins Junior High School, had 2,528 tickets. Zip code 02905, which contains the Roger Williams Middle School and the Juanita Sanchez Complex on Thurbers Avenue, had 857 tickets.

The zip codes of registration of the ticket recipients were highly concentrated in or near the areas where the school speed cameras were installed. To the north, for example, the numbers of tickets drops off sharply for neighboring zip codes 02865 (Lincoln) and 02863 (Central Falls). To the south, the number of tickets likewise drops down to only 186 for the neighboring zip code 02888 (Warwick). Local vehicle owners have been far and away the majority of ticket recipients.

Number of school speed camera tickets by the zip code of the address of the vehicle registration,  Providence region, December 13, 2017 through March 3, 2018. Each full black square corresponds to 100 tickets. The four zip codes with the largest numbers of tickets were: 02908 with 2,569 tickets, 02904 with 2,528 tickets, 02909 with 1,413 tickets, and 02911 with 1,089 tickets. For a large version of this map, click here.

For each of the 12 local zip codes overlapping the boundaries of the city of Providence, I related the number of tickets issued to the estimated median family income in 2016. To estimate family income, I first downloaded a file from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that showed what percentage of each zip code’s residents was in each census tract. For each census tract, I then looked up data from the U.S. Census Bureau on the median family income in 2016.

The table below shows details of my calculation of median income for the zip code 02906, which overlapped nine different census tracts. My overall estimate of zip code income was a weighted average of the incomes of each contributing census tract.

The graph at the head of this article shows the relationship between the volume of school camera speeding tickets and the estimated family income of each local zip code. The darker the shade of green in each zip code, the higher is the volume of tickets. Within the city limits of Providence, as demarcated by the red boundary lines, the principal zip codes paying speeding fines have family incomes in the $31,500 to $44,500 range. It is striking that two zip codes within the city have essentially escaped the speeding fines. In zip code 02903, the poorest in the city with an estimated family income of $27,500, fewer residents own vehicles. That explains why they have received so few speeding tickets. But residents of zip code 02906, far and away the richest in the city with an estimated median family income of $71,800, surely own many cars.

Accordingly, the richest residents of our city have escaped the school camera speed tax, while the lower income car owners have had to pay.

More Than a Few Ironies

The facts offer us more than a few ironies. The new school speeding tickets have operated essentially as a revived version of the car excise tax that will be gradually phased out, except that they are far more regressive. In his recent letter to the city council vetoing an ordinance to ban plastic retail bags, our mayormaintained that the city can adopt “a plastic bag policy that eliminates this environmental hazard from our community, while not burdening our low-income residents.” Yet the reality is that lower income residents who own a car are being far more burdened by the speeding tickets. And while our local press has made a big deal of the fact that our city solicitor and a former mayor got tickets, commenting that “it appears few are unaffected, even the well-connected,” the reality is that the more fortunate in our city have this time dodged a fiscal bullet.