Red light cameras coming soon to Spokane’s most dangerous intersection

Two red -light cameras are coming to the intersection of Mission Avenue and Greene Street, the city’s most accident-prone intersection .

While there have been no fatalities at the intersection adjacent to Spokane Community College in the last eight years, since 2017 there have been more injuries caused by collisions in that location than anywhere else in the city, including six requiring hospitalization.

When the city released a report late last year detailing its most dangerous intersections, local leaders pointed to many possible solutions to slow down drivers, including infrastructure changes, finally standing up a full-time traffic enforcement unit in the police department, and also ticket-issuing cameras.

The two new cameras, expected to be operational within the next four months, may be just the beginning.

In a presentation to the Spokane City Council Monday, Deputy City Administrator Maggie Yates said the administration was considering purchasing as many as 10 more cameras, though Court Administrator Howard Delaney cautioned that the Spokane Municipal Court system would need additional staff to process those tickets.

The cameras issue nearly 1,700 tickets on average over a year, of which over 500 are contested in person in court while another roughly 700 are contested by mail, Delaney noted. Even handling the additional caseload of the two new cameras near the college will require replacing a court clerk who recently left, and adding 10 cameras to the system would require a new court commissioner position.

How exactly to pay for these additional cameras and staff to process the thousands of tickets they likely would generate remains an open question. Yates on Monday suggested the cameras could be paid for by pulling from funds from the sales tax voters approved in November. Councilman Michael Cathcart, arguing campaigners for the tax had talked about hiring traffic cops and not buying cameras, suggested the devices should be paid for with the revenue generated by the camera tickets.

Additional court staff also would be an allowable expense for the traffic ticket revenue, which goes into the Traffic Calming Fund, Delaney argued.

While city officials point to studies indicating that ticket-issuing cameras reduce the rate of accidents and injury, the cameras are also major moneymakers for the city, generating over $1.9 million in just the first six months of 2024.

However, a new state law caps traffic tickets to $290 in school zones and $145 elsewhere, significantly lower than was previously allowed. The fine can be further cut in half if the violator is a recipient of most forms of state public assistance.

The new law also widely expanded where cities can place their ticket-issuing traffic cameras, allowing them to be placed on sections of state routes that pass through city limits, areas designated by the city or county as having higher crash risks – such as on Mission and Greene – and in work zones.