Minneapolis will begin a traffic safety camera pilot program as early as August 2025 as a part of the city’s Vision Zero initiative to improve street safety.
As city officials continue to raise the alarm about speeding and red-light running, officials hope the initiative will reduce serious traffic injuries or deaths in the city’s streets to zero, Vision Zero Program Coordinator Ethan Fawley said.
Because of recently passed state legislation in May 2024 that gave legal authority to install these cameras, the pilot will have five cameras at first and may expand up to a maximum of 42, according to the City of Minneapolis website.
Bill chief author Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura (DFL-Minneapolis) said from 2022 to 2024, there were 31 traffic-related deaths in Minneapolis.
“If 31 people died on (the) light rail, we would be up in arms,” Sencer-Mura said in a committee meeting discussing the bill. “It would be the only thing this committee would be talking about.”
Potential locations for the new cameras will be selected based on traffic safety concerns in the area and proximity to a school with at least two cameras in every ward, Fawley said.
Based on 2020 data, Fawley said there has been an increase in speeding and running red lights, with most of the deaths coming from pedestrians rather than drivers.
“A strong majority of those folks (who died) were not themselves speeding or running red lights, they were just busting the streets or driving on their own and were killed by someone else who was,” Fawley said. “What we see from other cities and states around the country is that traffic safety cameras can play a role in improving traffic safety, and so that’s what we’re striving to do.”
The locations with cameras will post signage alerting drivers of the cameras, Fawley said. If a vehicle goes 10 or more miles per hour over the speed limit or runs a red light, the camera will take a picture of the license plate.
Fawley said that drivers will be given one warning with every following instance resulting in a citation mailed to the vehicle owner.
Mendota Heights Police Chief Kelly McCarthy said in her city, where they will soon install a similar movable safety camera, the biggest complaint she gets from residents is speeding.
“When people call and they say, ‘We want extra patrol in the street,’ and we put a squad car out there, people just change their behavior,” McCarthy said. “Then when the squad car is not there, they go back to whatever they were doing. If we can leave the camera out for a long enough period of time that hopefully we can actually change behavior.”
When the camera was purchased, McCarthy said it put police officers in a tough position because citizens want police to perform low-level traffic enforcement and stop vehicles for minor violations, but these stops can raise concerns about racial discrimination by law enforcement.
This program will not only improve traffic safety but also provide enforcement outside of the police department, Fawley said.
“We not only need to improve traffic safety, we need to reduce crashes and injuries and deaths,” Fawley said. “We also need to build community trust by implementing the system fairly and equitably and efficiently and protecting privacy, so we know we have to do all those things for this to be a success and that’s really what we’re striving to do.”
This city has already chosen potential locations to install these cameras. The two closest location candidates to the University of Minnesota are on 15th Street Southeast and 5th Avenue Southeast in Dinkytown as well as 25th Avenue South and Butler Place near Cedar-Riverside.
