PORT ANGELES – Port Angeles Police Chief Brian Smith reviewed for the City Council this week,  the ongoing discussion about bringing traffic safety cameras to Port Angeles.

These would be the same ones used in Seattle, which take a picture of your car speeding in a school zone or running a red light. Days later you get a copy of the photo and a citation in your mailbox.

It’s not a done deal yet, and the program wouldn’t be implemented until next year at the earliest, but city’s plan would start with one camera in one school zone and possibly grow the program there.

Chief Smith says the cameras would add one more tool to his department’s broader approach to traffic safety.

“The speed feedback signs, the red light cameras, the school zone cameras, the mobile traffic things, are all things that can help make driving safer, though we know that it doesn’t replace the need for traffic enforcement on the part of the officers. You know, the ability to engage with some amount of proactive policing. There is no replacement for law enforcement officers on the street that have time and resources to interdict, you know, dangerous driving, impaired driving. But we know that the combination of all these tools can help make the road safer and make driving safer.”

The initial cost of starting a camera program with contractor Verra Mobility would be $30,000. The plan would be to use the revenues raised by that first camera to pay for additional cameras later.

We asked Smith if he knew how much a ticket for a camera violation would cost.

“The model that appears to be a best practice is, that kind of violation becomes an infraction, and it’s different than a violation in terms of what the statute is that an officer would write a ticket for. So it’s a lower-level violation because it’s your car, getting a picture of it and your license plate. The violation still has to be verified by an officer, but it’s more like a parking ticket, like your car’s parked somewhere in violation. You don’t have to have been driving it to receive that citation, if it’s your car. The idea would be that it would be enough to get someone’s attention and to make the cost of the transaction worthwhile, but not something that’s, you know, looked at as the government simply looking for another way to extract revenue from people.”

Smith points out that speed cameras are only used in school zones. Red light cameras may or may not be introduced at a later time.

Photo is from a similar program in Portland, Oregon.