Aldermen reject bid to raise threshold for speed camera tickets in Chicago back to 10 mph

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The City Council on Wednesday voted down an attempt to raise the threshold for issuing speed camera tickets in Chicago back to 10 mph, from the 6 mph minimum Mayor Lori Lightfoot included as part of her 2021 budget.

Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) has been trying for more than a year to undo the lower threshold, but Lightfoot and her allies had successfully stalled a full council vote until Wednesday, when only 18 aldermen voted in favor of the proposal to repeal the lower threshold, with 26 aldermen voting against the ordinance. Beale needed 26 votes to pass it.

That means drivers caught by speed cameras going 6 mph to 10 mph over the limit will continue to get $35 tickets. Those caught going 11 mph or more over the limit will get $100 tickets.

Ald. Michelle Harris (8th), the mayor's floor leader, said she wasn't willing to raise the threshold back to 10 mph given all the problems she has with speeders on busy Cottage Grove Avenue and Jeffery Boulevard in her ward, noting she saw a man get hit and killed right outside her ward office on Cottage Grove.

"I'm not willing to turn back the clock, because my community is saying you'd better do something about the speed in which cars are driving," she said.

Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st), who was also among those who voted against changing the speed camera rules, read off a list of the names of several people who have died in traffic accidents this year. He also cited data showing that, at 20 mph, the chances of surviving being hit by a car are 90%, while those odds drop to 20% at 40 mph, which would be 10 mph above the limit on most city streets.

"I can't stand here in good conscience and cast a vote that I know leads to more names on that list, more people losing their lives," he said.

Ahead of the vote, Lightfoot personally urged aldermen not to return the speed camera threshold back to 10 mph.

"We need to take more steps to slow people down," she said. "Increasing the speeds encourages the speeders to do more destruction to our residents."

But Beale claimed the mayor's push to keep the lower threshold in place was "not about safety," but about keeping tens of millions of dollars in revenue that speed camera tickets generate with the 6 mph threshold.

He said raising the threshold back to 10 mph would provide real relief to Chicago motorists already burdened with gas prices well above $5 per gallon.

"This is about true relief here in the city of Chicago for the residents that can least afford to continue to pay these tickets," Beale said. "Don't go for the okey doke about it's about safety, because it's not. The data shows that it's not about safety, that it's 100,000% about revenue."

Nonetheless, the majority of Beale's colleagues on the City Council sided with Lightfoot, bringing an end to a debate that has dragged on for more than a year. Beale first introduced his proposal in March 2021, just weeks after the lower threshold went into place.

The mayor and her allies successfully blocked a vote on Beale's plan multiple times in the past year, using a series of parliamentary maneuvers to bottle up the ordinance before it finally got a debate before the Finance Committee last month.

Wednesday's vote came a month after the City Council Finance Committee voted 16-15 to raise the threshold back to 10 mph, but Lightfoot and her allies used a parliamentary maneuver to put off a final vote by the full City Council, giving the mayor more time to round up the votes she needed to defeat it.

Earlier this week, Lightfoot stopped just short of threatening a veto if the City Council had voted to raise the threshold back – saying she would not "stand idly by" and allow the Council to "do something that I know will be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of the city."

"It makes no sense for us to increase the speed around the parks and schools when we know what the horrific consequences are for pedestrians and for other drivers," Lightfoot said on Monday.

Before his bid to raise the speed camera ticket threshold back to 10 mph was defeated, Beale lamented the multiple maneuvers that delayed a final vote on his plan, saying the issue should have been settled much sooner.

"We should have had this debate a long time ago, and we could have moved on since then," he said.

The lower 6 mph threshold that went into effect for speed camera tickets in March 2021 led to a surge in violations, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in fines last year.

Lightfoot and her top aides have spent months arguing the 6 mph threshold is about safety, and the mayor has said it's "truly unconscionable" for aldermen to consider raising it back to 10 mph.

The mayor and Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gia Biagi have argued the lower threshold will reduce traffic accidents and fatalities

Last month, Biagi told aldermen the city saw a 15% increase in traffic fatalities in 2021, compared to 2020, and that increase has been linked in part to speeding. She said the 174 traffic deaths in 2021 was the most in the past decade.

"People are driving fast, they're driving furious, they're driving distracted, they're driving under the influence, and they're driving without a seatbelt," Biagi said. "Anything we can do to get folks to slow down is something that we want to make sure happens in our city. It's going to save lives."

Biagi said a study by the University of Illinois at Chicago last year found that the city's speed camera program prevented 208 injury crashes over a three-year period from 2016 to 2018, a reduction of 12% compared to the years 2010 to 2012, before speed cameras were installed in Chicago. She said the study also found the number of severe crashes was reduced by 15%, meaning 36 fewer people not severely injured or killed during that time.

Despite Lightfoot's and Biagi's assertions, the CBS 2 Investigators found traffic accidents actually gone up in Chicago since the 6 mph threshold went into place last year.

The city saw 142 traffic fatalities citywide – including 9 fatal accidents and 10 deaths near speed cameras – in the 12 months before the change, and 181 in the 12 months after – including 13 fatal accidents and 13 deaths near speed cameras during that time.

After months of arguing the need to keep the lower threshold in place was about traffic safety, Lightfoot acknowledged earlier this week it's also about revenue, saying that returning to the 10 mph threshold would cost the city of nearly $45 million in funding for public safety programs, city infrastructure upgrades, and Safe Passage workers near schools and parks.

Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), who defended the lower speed camera ticket threshold, said none of the aldermen who supported raising it have sufficiently explained how the city would make up for that lost revenue, with only months to go before they must vote on the city's budget for 2023.

"I don't want to give up my Safe Passage workers," he said. "I think it's important that when you make this vote that you make it with your eyes open, not hoping that we're going to figure out the plug on the other side of this issue."

Beale said, while he accepts Wednesday's defeat, he won't give up the fight. He said he plans to continue pushing to change the threshold for speed camera tickets back closer to the original 10 mph.