Pittsfield to Consider Speeding Cameras By Brittany Polito, iBerkshires Staff
05:37AM / Thursday, February 20, 2025 | |
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Will Pittsfield have speeding cameras in 2026? That is to be decided.
Ward 1 Councilor Kenneth Warren would like the city to consider traffic cameras for speeding enforcement. The City Council referred his petition to Mayor Peter Marchetti last week.
"Obviously, the mayor's got to consider it, consider whether it's something we are willing to do, something that we are willing to pay for," he said.
Warren suggested the use of speed safety cameras to deal with the city's almost "epidemic" speeding problems.
"Safety dictates that we expand our arsenal in the fight for speed mitigation in order to foster safe streets," he wrote to fellow councilors.
Gov. Maura Healey's $62 billion budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 includes a provision to legalize the traffic cameras starting in July of next year. Before this, state law did not allow for them.
"As people may remember, I petitioned for this before, but at the time the state law — and I did not realize that, I made a mistake — the state law didn't allow it," Warren explained.
"…This would allow tickets to be issued by a stationary camera so it would supplement our police."
He said councilors often hear requests for police officers to monitor streets where cars tend to speed but there is not always the workforce to meet those needs.
"It might be very helpful and cost-effective, but it's something that the mayor should look at and then we can go from there," he said.
Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey recalled his time living in Colorado and wondered why Massachusetts didn't use the cameras. He voted in opposition to the petition, as the cameras will illegal in the state for more than a year — should the Legislature pass the bill.
"Because it's illegal here, it will still be," he said. "We won't be able to have these cameras until July of 2026 with the way that the governor's working on it."
SSCs detect speeding and capture photographic or video evidence of vehicles that are violating a set speed threshold. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, "Agencies can use speed safety cameras (SSCs) as an effective and reliable technology to supplement more traditional methods of enforcement, engineering measures, and education to alter the social norms of speeding."
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