Pawtucket – The City of Pawtucket has announced that the Traffic Camera Safety Program will begin on Wednesday, August 28, 2019 in coordination with the first day of school. The program will be beneficial to the city, enhance school safety and make operations citywide more efficient.

“Speeding in school zones has been a problem in our cities and the Traffic Camera Safety Program will help to minimize this issue,” said Acting Public Safety Director and Police Chief Tina Goncalves. “Using this technology will simply be a new tool for the Police Department to improve the safety of the residents. The traffic cameras will allow us to stretch our resources as many communities have done throughout the country.”

Over 500 cities in the United States have some form of traffic camera safety program including red light, school speed or a combination of both. The program will commence with a 30-day warning period. Motorists will receive a notice in the mail instead of a violation with the goal of changing driver behavior before a violation.

As part of the program, Sensys Gatso, the contractor, has covered the costs associated with the equipment, camera installation, and signage. The police department will retain all powers and responsibilities and will make the final determination on if a violation occurred. Motorists will also retain all rights of appeal through the judicial process. Sensys Gatso’s role is to gather data and send it to the police department for review. The cameras will be pole mounted.

The initial cameras coming on line are as follows:

Intersection Cameras:

• Cottage St & Newport Ave (Rt 1A)
• Prospect St @ Division St
• Main St & Lonsdale Ave (Rt 122)

School Cameras:

• Potter Burns Elementary School & Goff Middle School
• Nathanael Greene Elementary School
• Curtis Elementary School
• Varieur Elementary School
• Samuel Slater Middle School and Cunningham Elementary School
• Shea High School
• Jenks Middle School
• Agnes Little Elementary School
• Curvin McCabe Elementary School

Previously, the General Assembly passed legislation that revised the camera safety program. The changes included;

• lowering the violation from $95.00 to $50.00 for school speed violations;
• restricting school camera operations to school days only;
• and limiting operations from 7:00am to 6:00pm.

For more information, please visit http://www.pawtucketri.com/PublicSafetyCameraProgram.

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