New cameras are designed to catch Oakland’s speedy drivers. Can they slow the roads?

OAKLAND — The city’s transportation director stood Friday morning at a busy Oakland intersection, explaining how newly installed road-safety cameras will work, when suddenly his voice was drowned out by a car roaring down a nearby road.

The vehicle, nowhere in sight, was apparently going fast enough that its rattling engine could be heard loudly by those gathered at Broadway and 27th Street, where one of the new cameras is mounted to a street light.

“Speeding is a choice,” Josh Rowan, the city’s transportation director, said when the noise subsided. “We make these choices every day.”

The fleet of 18 cameras — sleek, black devices that resemble Darth Vader’s helmet from afar — began snapping photos on Wednesday of license plates moving too quickly along heavily trafficked Oakland thoroughfares.

These road corridors include International Boulevard between 40th and 41st avenues in East Oakland; 7th Street between Broadway and Franklin Street downtown; 7th between Adeline and Linden streets in West Oakland and Hegenberger Road between Spencer and Hawley streets near the Oakland Coliseum.

Following a 60-day warning period that ends March 15, the city will begin issuing fines to drivers linked to those license plates.

The safety initiative is intended to calm traffic speeds in a town where the sound of screeching tires can fill the air of an otherwise peaceful Friday morning.

“Too many Oakland families have lost loved ones due to traffic violence,” Mayor Barbara Lee said at the news conference on Broadway.

Verra Mobility, an company based in Arizona, installed the cameras and will operate them over the next five years for $4.8 million in public money. The company absorbed a more prominent Bay Area speed-camera operator, Redflex Traffic Systems, in 2021.

Revenue generated from the new pilot program will be put back into traffic safety initiatives, officials said.

The fines will also carry an “income-based option” so that those making less money in wages won’t be charged as much. Officials on Friday did not provide specific examples of how much people would pay if caught speeding.

The cameras differ from Oakland’s automated license plate reader devices, which have generated controversy among the public over their use of artificial intelligence that scans images for all kinds of identifying details. Speed cameras do not use the same technology.

“These are not surveillance cameras,” Will Barnow, a Verra executive, said at Friday’s news conference. “These are cameras that are only used for the purpose of slowing folks down and saving lives.”

The camera data will be managed by city transportation officials, Rowan said, and not by the Oakland Police Department, which “made it clear they want nothing to do with this.”

Oakland will have limited options for enforcing the fines without law enforcement’s aid. The city will first send notices in the mail to addresses registered to the captured license plates.

But those who do not respond may not ultimately face any penalties to their driving record or have trouble renewing their licenses, officials said.

Calming the city streets is a tall order for Oakland’s leaders, who have struggled to curb road safety.

The segment of 7th Street in West Oakland where a camera is now mounted sees 14.6% of drivers travel above the 30 mph speed limit, according to a city Department of Transportation report published last year.

At the Hegenberger corridor near the Coliseum, the 40 mph limit is topped by over 10,000 vehicles a day, or 43% of the total number of drivers, per the same report.

Last year, then-Police Chief Floyd Mitchell dissolved the department’s traffic safety unit to divert more resources to patrol — a move that police leaders more recently said helped produce a citywide crime reduction.

On the other hand, Lee said Friday that other measures to slow traffic on International Boulevard are working. Pedestrian deaths on the thoroughfare dropped from 7 in 2023 to none last year.

“There is real progress,” the mayor said. “Hopefully, with this program, the downward trend will continue.”

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.