‘More than 100 residents packed a meeting over Fairfield’s speed cameras’ (CT Insider)

As published by CT Insider:

“When we implemented the law, we emphasized to allow municipal governments to design, to understand the unique challenges and characteristics of each town and we insisted that there were frequent transparent public meetings,” Hwang said.

More than 100 residents gathered at Fairfield Warde High School Tuesday to voice their concerns about the town’s new, and highly criticized, speed cameras. Among the worries of the devices’ vocal opponents was that the cameras were akin to surveillance.

“We all want live in safe communities with safe streets, but is surveillance technology and artificial intelligence needed to achieve this?” Fairfield resident Chris Martin said at the meeting, to applause from other audience members.

The forum focused on roadway safety initiatives, including the newly-implemented speed cameras in six school zones that operate during summer months and 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

“The goal of these initiatives is to make our streets safer for drives, pedestrians and cyclists, especially around our schools,” First Selectperson Christine Vitale said at the beginning of the meeting.

Although some residents who attended were understanding of the speed cameras, a majority were critical of the speed cameras for several reasons including how the cameras are running 24 hours a day all year, and privacy concerns. Many of the residents loudly voiced criticism from their seats after roughly an half an hour into the meeting.

The event was scheduled for two hours but ran for three with well over two dozen residents lining up to ask questions or voice concerns.

Former Representative Town Meeting member Jeff Steele said he thinks there’s a speeding problem in town, but when he was on the RTM, he was one of six members who voted against the speed cameras.

“I voted against because this wasn’t ready,” Steele said “We can see it doesn’t seem to be ready yet. I know it’s implemented but we never really vetted it with people.”

The town is entering the third month of its safety speed camera rollout as the program initially went live in May, which was the warning period before the citations began being issued out in June.

Officials announced last month the cameras will continue to operate during the summer months.  When school starts Sept. 1 in Fairfield, regular speed limits of 20 mph will be enforced. But during the summer, that limit is actually increased to either 25 or 30 mph.

The speed camera is only activated if a someone is driving 11 mph above the speed limit or more.

Jason Norton, chief revenue officer of Altumint, the company that provides the speed cameras, gave a presentation about the cameras near the beginning of the meeting. He said the program is aimed at changing drivers’ behavior and believes it’s working in Fairfield.

During his presentation, Norton said 75,000 vehicles have triggered the cameras to date.

He said there were over 7,300 violations on the first day of warnings on May 1. That figure dropped to 80% by the last day of that month. From May 1 to the last day of June, there was an 87.2% reduction in speeding violations.

Altumint’s preliminary data indicates the drivers who sped the most changed the most. Norton said 2.9% of the drivers caught by the cameras in May had 10 violations or more, and made up about 22% of all the violations.

But that same group of chronic speeders, who Norton said averaged 1,000 violations a day between them during the warning period, changed their behavior markedly when enforcement went live. Once tickets began being issued, Norton said, the average number of daily violations by chronic speeders fell to 147.

Each time a violation takes place, Altumint will look through it and send it off to the Department of Motor Vehicles to make sure the plates, make and model matches. Town officials are the only people who can authorize the citation to go out.

Personal information, such as the offender’s address, has to be deleted within 30 days after violation has ended.

Police Chief Mike Paris said he was at first skeptical of this program but speed cameras are tools to help slow down drivers.

“I have seen speed kill too many people and the speed of vehicles in this town is not slowing,” he said.

Paris said other police officers expected to attend the public meeting but were called out to crash in which a bicyclist was struck by a vehicle.

According to police, a motor vehicle collided with a bicyclist on Tuesday about 5:50 p.m. at the intersection of Morehouse Highway and Canterbury Lane. The bicyclist was transported to a local hospital with serious injuries and remained in critical but stable condition on Wednesday, police said.

State and town officials are committed to advancing Vision Zero initiative with goal of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2034.

Public Works Director Frank Petise said Vision Zero is a global initiative to get serious injuries and fatal crashes down to zero.

The initiative launched in Sweden in 1997 before New York City was the first city to adopt the program in the nation.

State Sen. Tony Hwang, a ranking member of the state Transportation Committee, who cowrote the 2023 Vision Zero legislation, said although some of the streets near school zones have seen a decrease in speeding, other streets have seen the same culture of speeding.

“When we implemented the law, we emphasized to allow municipal governments to design, to understand the unique challenges and characteristics of each town and we insisted that there were frequent transparent public meetings,” Hwang said.

Several Connecticut municipalities are moving forward with the program including Stamford, Norwalk, New Haven and West Hartford.

“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a large increase in vehicle speeds and the severity of crashes,” said Petise referring to the state and nation as well.

The town is looking to achieve Vision Zero in several ways beside speed cameras, including raised crosswalks and intersections, curb extensions and lane narrowing, Petise added.