Edmonton’s photo radar revenue continues to grow.

The city expects to pull in $47.8 million from automated traffic enforcement by the end of 2015, according to a year-end financial statement that will go before council Wednesday.

That’s up from about $30 million in 2014.

While the city has been dogged with accusations of using the program as a cash cow, Coun. Andrew Knack maintains it’s the best option for funding traffic safety programs.

“I don’t think photo radar itself is what’s there to help improve traffic safety. But it’s the office of traffic safety and the work that they do that’s been helping to reduce collisions so substantially since 2007,” he said.

“We can either fund it through the general tax base, which means everyone pays for it, or we can fund it through photo radar, which means those that maybe aren’t always following the rules of the road can help pay for the traffic safety initiative.

“When it’s one of those two options, I’m always going to choose the photo radar option.”

A $6.8-million chunk of the revenue increase is due to a provincial move to increase traffic fines and violations by an average of 35 per cent.

The city is projecting a reserve fund balance of $25.3 million this year, which is nearly 10 times higher than the minimum required reserve balance of $2.4 million.

Last year’s reserve hit $18.6 million. Using that fund as well as this year’s revenues, the city plans to allocate $18.8 million to the Edmonton Police Service, $11.5 million to the Office of Traffic Safety and smaller amounts to a community facility grant program and other traffic safety initiatives.

kevin.maimann@sunmedia.ca