This is an annual update of the statistics I posted at the end of 2015.

As is rather typical in conversations with Edmontonians, I am frequently asked about the photo radar program, and my thoughts on it. I like to speak from a place of knowledge and facts. Since data about the photo radar program is not in our open data catalogue, I make a point of making a request for information annually, and share that data with everyone in as public a form as possible. Keep an eye out over the next couple of weeks as more information will be coming out - if you want to hear about it you can subscribe on Facebook, Twitter, or Email.

For now, let's look at the number of tickets issued this year.

In 2014 we saw a huge jump (about 300%) in tickets issued for 6-10 over. This likely correlated with the beginning of school zone enforcement (I should have more data on that soon, look out for that!)

However, we're now seeing a stabilization of tickets for 6-10 over, but the distribution of tickets is trending closer to the centre. Less tickets are issued for higher violation speeds. There has been a consistent increase in tickets issued for 11-15 over, which is charted below.

As a reminder, since we have a three-year budgeting process in Edmonton, we know where the expected revenues from photo radar are supposed to go.

Particularly interesting to me is that all told, traffic safety initiatives and capital investment only use about 19% of the total photo radar revenue.

There's still not enough data widely available to really make great claims one way or another about the efficacy of our photo radar program for increasing safety - stay tuned in the next couple weeks as I gather and release more detailed data.

But there's one thing I know for certain. If the city has accepted Vision Zero as our traffic safety program, we absolutely need to be spending more than 20% of speeding ticket revenues on the infrastructure and design changes required to make our roads safer, permanently.