Most NYC Speed Cameras Set To 'Go Dark' Wednesday

NEW YORK, NY — New York City officials made a last-ditch appeal to state senators to re-up the city's life-saving speed camera program just a day before it expires. Some 120 of the 140 cameras used to ticket dangerous drivers in school zones will shut down Wednesday evening if lawmakers don't act, putting kids' lives at risk, city officials said Tuesday.

"I just can’t make sense of it — how something that clearly protects people, protects children in particular, could slip through the hands of our public servants in Albany," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday at a Staten Island rally.

The Democratic mayor, city schools Chancellor Richard Carranza and Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg implored the Republican-controlled state Senate to reconvene and reauthorize the program — a call senators have not heeded.

The state Legislature closed its session last month without renewing the city's authorization to ticket speeding drivers using cameras in 140 school zones. The city will still be able to use 20 "mobile" cameras after Wednesday, de Blasio said, but the rest will "go dark."

Data shows the cameras have made city streets safer since they were first used in 2014, officials contend. Fatalities in school zones with cameras declined 55 percent in the period after they were installed, according to a city Department of Transportation report, and speeding at camera locations drops 63 percent during school hours.

The city's stats run contrary to the nationwide increase in traffic and pedestrian fatalities in the past four years, Trottenberg said Tuesday.

"Here in New York we have dramatically bucked the national trend, and it is clear that speed cameras have been part of the puzzle," she said.

The Assembly passed a bill before the regular session ended in June that would expand the program to 290 city school zones and preserve it until July 1, 2022. But officials and advocates — including the parents of kids killed by errant drivers — have demanded the Senate go back to Albany and keep the program alive.

"Our first obligation as elected officials is to ensure public safety, and there's indisputable evidence showing speed cameras save children's lives," Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Tuesday. "The Senate Republicans' refusal to return to Albany and pass this legislation is a complete dereliction of that duty."

But the GOP majority blamed Democrats for the program's imminent death.

In a statement Tuesday, Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Long Island) said the cameras will shut down becasue of Cuomo and the Assembly's "unwillingness to engage senators with a larger vision for street safety to protect children."

Senators proposed installing red lights and stop signs at every school intersection in addition to extending the current speed camera program, but the governor didn't send the Senate extension legislation until after the chamber had adjourned, Flanagan said.

"(T)hese politicians shamelessly mug for the press as they blame others," Flanagan said. "They should look no further than within."

(Lead image: A woman on a bike with a child rides past school buses in the East Village in January 2013. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)