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Why were such changes necessary?

If a photo radar contractor is getting paid per ticket, Holmes said, they will sit at a certain site if they know it has a huge amount of traffic, even if there’s no real safety issues there.

And then came Holmes’ truth bomb: “They were spending 90 per cent of their time in three different spots that were on the edge of a town and it’s just like it was a bit of a cash cow, honey pot situation.”

The notion that photo radar is used as a cash cow on arterial roads where the vast majority are moving safely with the flow of traffic will come as no shock to many Edmontonians.

The City of Edmonton took over control of the photo radar program in 2013 from police, then rapidly ramped up enforcement, while secretly dropping its tolerance levels for speeding. These measures tripled the number of speeding tickets. City revenues rose from $13.4 million in 2012 to $37 million in 2015.

Are we any safer? No.

The collision rate has stayed almost exactly the same, moving from 28.9 per 100,000 people in 2011 to 28.5 per 100,000 in 2015.

As a point of comparison, Ottawa has a lower fatality, injury and collision rate than Edmonton, even though Ottawa gives out 1/11th the speeding tickets.

These facts haven’t moved any local Edmonton politician to protest much, no one to repeat the obvious truths that Holmes is saying. For example, she admitted it’s tough for local governments to give up on photo radar partly because the fines raise so much money.