The north mile of Rainier Ave has seen 152 crashes in the past three years. Despite the 25mph speed limit, SDOT has measured vehicles traveling up to 80mph.

On Wednesday, SDOT announced four new speed cameras will be installed across Seattle in 2027. These four cameras are the first of 10 cameras that will be installed by March 2029, per Mayor Wilson’s Vision Zero executive order. The selected locations were chosen as they are some of the most dangerous sections of Seattle’s road network. Speed cameras cannot replace full road redesigns, but they are an effective temporary measure until a concrete redesign is implemented. The four cameras will be installed at:

  • Rainier Ave S (northbound between S Holgate St and S Jackson St)
  • E Marginal Way S (between S Fidalgo St and Diagonal Ave S)
  • Rainier Ave S (between S Norfolk St and 51st Ave S)
  • Sand Point Way NE (between NE 74th St and Matthews Ave NE)

These broad sections will be narrowed down to the exact camera locations over the next few months. Signs warning drivers of the cameras will be installed 30 days before the cameras are turned on. Once the cameras are enabled, they will only issue warnings for the first 30 days.

The four locations chosen for this initial batch of speed cameras are hotspots for dangerous driving. SDOT data show these sections have an 85th percentile speed more than 10mph above the speed limit. While a 5mph or 10mph difference may be insignificant to a driver, faster speeds are much more deadly. A 2011 study found that someone has a 70% higher chance of being killed by a vehicle traveling at 30mph versus at 25mph. Over the last three years, the four sections have collectively had 305 crashes that caused 138 injuries and 3 fatalities.

The four new cameras will join a growing network of red light cameras, school speed safety cameras, block the box cameras, and bus lane cameras. These cameras are not used for any purposes other than traffic safety. From SDOT: “State law requires that traffic safety cameras may only film when they detect a traffic violation. The video cannot be used as evidence to prosecute other kinds of crimes aside from speeding.”

Map of existing traffic cameras. New cameras will be added somewhere along the green lines. (SDOT)

This is an open thread.

71 Replies to “Friday Roundtable: New Speed Cameras”

  1. Are any of the various traffic cameras in Seattle operated by, or have the technology and equipment provided by Flock?

    1. I’m not sure who the vendor for these cameras are, but they are generally a bit different than the Flock style camera. They only activate when speeding is detected and I don’t think they have the same kind of AI search features that Flock et al. market. But not 100% sure on that.

      The real-time crime center cameras that SPD uses are made and operated by Flock competitor Axon.

      1. I’ll note for those who don’t yet know: privacy issues are far from a Flock-only issue. If a private company is collecting your information, assume it’s being sold to—or given to, or leaked to—everyone from private companies to national governments across the world.

        No privacy policy can be assumed to hold water, no legal agreement will protect users from this. The only solution it not to collect the information in the first place.

      1. Now that is one stupid law. The stock whine by one of these scoff-laws is “You can’t prove it was me driving my car. You can only assume it.”

        What is wrong with photographing the speeder?

        2. Yeah, it gets treated like a parking ticket. The point being you can’t use it as a way to determine if a driver is legal. For example, let’s say you have a suspended license. Most of the time your wife just drives your car. But now you drive and get an automated ticket. The police can’t use the pictures as evidence that you were driving. It is as if your wife (or some other licensed driver) was driving, not you. The law is intended to avoid the kind of abuse that is possible with cameras on the street (that are focused on faces).

        3. The law itself, that allowed the new uses of traffic cams at all, was brilliant. The ACLU forced privacy protections for the drivers as the price for getting out of the way of its passage.

          If tickets start getting waived because the driver can’t be proved, the Legislature can remove the privacy protection.

  2. The number of mechanical and maintenance problems that Sound Transit experiences on Link Light Rail is excessive and indicates an inadequate management of preventive maintenance. All this while the system shuts down for 5-6 hours every night. and is still a relatively new system.

    Overhead catenary systems with pantographs are used all over the world without repeated mechanical issues. They are blaming the pantograph. That can only happen if there isn’t an adequate inspection and maintenance program for the vehicles. Who is going to be held accountable, Dow?

  3. Why is Katie Wilson installing cameras on the streets when she just turned them off?

      1. “That’s right, speed cameras! Though imo it’s still ironic that Katie Wilson installs speed cameras.

        2. Seattle homicides are on the downslide, whereas Seattle traffic deaths and injuries are on the upside.

          While cameras do not prevent homicides or violent crimes, they do have a very real and documented effect on slowing down traffic.

          While I do not like government surveillance (or any for that matter), using it to fine selfish people who would put complete strangers lives at risk to save seconds off their drive is a reluctantly acceptable use.

        3. a reluctantly acceptable use

          Aren’t there cameras recording all the time on Metro buses? If not there should be. It’s ubiquitous on school buses. Even Jr. High kids are more civilized than some of the transit riding public in Seattle. I don’t recall any King County school bus drivers being killed by passengers. Ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ and willing to bet your (drivers) life on it?

        4. “Ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ and willing to bet your (drivers) life on it?”

          You make it sound like an average driver is likely to get killed every day. There are thousands of bus drivers and tens of thousands of bus runs every day, and only one driver gets killed every few years. That’s one driver too many, but still, the chance of getting killed as a bus driver is tiny.

        5. only one driver gets killed every few years.
          So you’re good with the status quo. We pay bus drivers enough they should be willing to take the risk? And the day to day crap they have to put up with is OK too? Nothing to see here, move along; we’re creating a “progressive society” (i.e. drag everyone down to the lowest level so they’ll support the homeless industrial complex). Wonder what Amalgamated Transit Union Local 587 would take as an official position on, “meh, it’s only every few years a driver gets killed’.

        6. Do you avoid working in an office because something heavy might fall on you or you might get electrocuted? Do you avoid walking because you might get hit by a car? That’s comparable to the likelihood of being killed as a bus driver. What would Uber drivers say if asked the same question?

        7. Yes, there are cameras on the bus, Bernie. Obviously. They captured the confrontation that involved driver Kim. The cameras didn’t capture the actual stabbing (since that occurred off the bus). That murder occurred in 2024. The previous murder was in 1998. Mark McLaughlin was killed by someone who then killed himself. Obviously the cameras didn’t do much good there, either. The point Mike is making is that while these incidents are terrible they are also rare. Two murders in 28 years (and I don’t know when the previous one occurred).

          In contrast we know that collisions are quite common. We also know that speed cameras are quite effective.

        8. Yes, there are cameras on the bus

          And that was my original question/comment. Why the negative about speed cameras or even Flock when Metro records every second of everyone when you’re on the bus? But somehow if you’re waiting at the stop recording that is somehow Trump==Bad? Or even more twisted is you have a right to privacy waiting (or walking/driving) to the bus even though every bus stop is on public ROW.

    2. Because the speed enforcement camera locations that they’ve chosen are going to produce more tickets for drivers that don’t in Seattle! Heaven forbid they put the cameras on 15th Ave or Elliott or Fauntleroy or Aurora in Queen Anne or 1st Ave near the Stadiums. And these are not areas where there’s lots of pedestrians compared to other areas of Seattle. To say these enforcement camera locations are improving pedestrian safety is essentially laughable.

  4. I’d like to see an improvement in the quality of reporting after some of you attend Pinehurst Station’s opening day, or first week. Less “they ran out of stickers,” and more “I rode the E Line to 130th Ave to transfer to the route 77 to Pinehurst. Here’s how that went.”

    1. ‘Twas a crisp day in the nether time twixt summer and autumn. As I arrived at the bus stop on Aurora Avenue (like the Borealis), I noticed an unpleasant aroma wafting in the breeze. Someone was smoking the Devil’s Lettuce at the bus stop! In my city! Using my transit system! This travesty could go no further! So when my bus arrived (3 minutes late) I spoke to driver Eric…”

    2. I’ll be out of town when the station opens. After that I’ll walk and take the bus to the station. I will comment on my experience and how it differs from Northgate.

    1. Not to worry. Wilson’s committed critics in the corporate media will concern troll about the choices of where to place cameras after having spent decades opposing road diets.

    2. Speed camera is something you put at 148th Ave NE in Bellevue and may work in terms of correcting behavior and generating revenue.
      I doubt speed camera will do much to some of those crazy maneuvers on Aurora Ave frequently featured in Seattle Traffic Cam. Those drivers are up there doing things way more illegal than speeding, so they might as well drive stolen vehicles or don’t have license plates properly displayed.

    3. If you bing “last car pedestrian fatality in Seattle,” one of the last, if not the last, was at Bellevue Ave & Pine St. Early this year, a car was going south on Bellevue Ave, and made a right turn on Pine, hitting and killing a pedestrian in the crosswalk. Bellevue Ave is 25 mph. There’s no turn on red at the intersection. Every street leading to the intersection is one lane. Presumably the walk signal gets a head start before the traffic light turns green. How do you make an intersection like that safer for pedestrians?

      1. 15 mph throughout the city?

        Curb bulb-outs stopping people from rounding the corner at-speed with the peds in the car drivers blindspot?

        Narrow the street so drivers never feel comfortable going more than 15?

        Close the street to cars?

        Close the city to cars?

        3. There are parking lanes on both sides of Bellevue and Pine, and it’s well documented that “daylighting” the intersection without restricting the turn radius makes the intersection less safe for pedestrians, so an easy improvement would be to bulb out the corner, as Cam suggests.

          However, there also needs to be some onus to make it more difficult to obtain and maintain a license to drive in the city. Of course, that requires making it much easier to get around the city without driving.

          Currently, driving is still the fastest, most comfortable, and most convenient way to move around most of Seattle. Driving will always be the most comfortable way to move around, but it shouldn’t be the most convenient, and definitely shouldn’t be the fastest.

      2. The Pine and Bellevue fatality happened at 8 pm on a February evening.

        The City keeps focusing on pedestrian fatalities and injuries as a daylight issue. They’re mostly ignoring the bigger risk which is at night.

        We need to refocus Vision Zero to make it safer to cross streets specifically after dark!

        1. The visibility problem is exacerbated when pedestrians (myself included) wear dark clothing while walking the streets in the rainy dark. Recipe for disaster: Seattle edition

        2. I big push when working on fusion zero in Albuquerque was finding funding for street lights. Increasing visibility decreases all sorts of crime, including manslaughter via automobile.

          Trying to get the whole city to dress in reflective orange won’t work, and smacks of victim-blaming.

        3. The visibility problem is exacerbated when pedestrians (myself included) wear dark clothing

          Yes, there must be a certain amount of accountability/responsibility on all sides. Back when I rode a motorcycle my mantra was “you are invisible”. You have to think that way when you are on a motorcycle if you want to live. As the saying goes, do you want to be right or dead right? It’s not about “victim blaming”; it’s just being smart.

        4. There is a big difference between choosing a transportation that increases your odds of dying by an order of magnitude compared to just about any other way getting around other than wingsuit, and just walking across the street.

          If I were stupid enough to ride a motorcycle, and didn’t have a terminal cancer diagnosis, I would wrap myself in 5 strings of blinking Christmas lights.

        5. Trying to get the whole city to wear hi-viz won’t work, but encouraging people to wear hi-viz would be a good policy. There’s nothing victim-blaming about it. Cities should hand out free hi-viz vests, umbrellas, backpacks, hats, etc.

        6. You could, though it would be a waste of breath and money. They few trembling safety 1sr grandmas walking around in blinking orange skirts are t going to be the people who get hit, no matter what the wear.

          Make the environment safe. Skip the nonsense that doesn’t work.

        7. There’s some pretty dark intersections I’ve been through in both London and Vancouver BC. Drivers stop for pedestrians just fine at those intersections.

          Yes, the drivers have to be paying closer attention than during daylight hours, but I’ve not seen anyone in those cities deciding they have to wear high visibility vests to keep from getting killed.

  6. I-90 EB on-ramp from Bellevue Way, I-405 NB and I-405 SB ramps will be closed this weekend. This is an impactful closure for bus in the eastside.
    There doesn’t seem to be a service alert about it probably because no stop is impacted, but I think there will be some delays due to congestion and detour.

    The buses (roughly 14 bus trips per hour if I count it correctly) as from South Bellevue to Eastgate might need to make a detour via Coal Creek Pkwy and Factoria Blvd to re-enter I-90 EB along with all other general traffic from I-405.

    If you are from Seattle and have to go to Issaquah or beyond this weekend, my suggestion is to take light rail to catch 215/269 at Mercer Island to avoid those on-ramps. Even if you are going to Downtown Issaquah which only 556 serves, try not to take 556 from west of Eastgate.

    1. Also, WSDOT will be closing the 520 EB ramp to Montlake Blvd for a week starting Saturday at 4:30PM. That may put some additional pressure on 90 with people opting to go over Capitol Hill rather than fight their way through the U District.

      1. I wonder if ST has been waiting for construction to be concluded on SR 520 before moving more STX 545 trips to STX 542 (hopefully eventually to become the Stride 4 Line).

        1. I’d think construction could only encourage them to move 545 trips to 542.
          545 is not faster than transferring 1 Line during congested hours. It is like investing service hours for nothing.
          But maybe you are right. Maybe when ST realized they couldn’t run 544 using the new SR 520-I-5 express lane connector ramp, they decided to push the plan of retiring 545 until that ramp is open.

      2. The SR 520 closure should be less surprising since similar events have happened so many times in the past 5-8 years. The complicated part is that there a Husky game tomorrow noon.

        2. The Husky football game day shuttles are gone, as of this season. So are the Seahawks game day shuttles.

          We missed doing posts to commemorate the occasions.

    2. The I-90 closure is cancelled (“postponed”) this weekend. But your larger point about bus impacts still holds when they do the closure some other time.

      The 556 and 240 could detour onto WB I-90 and turn around at the E Mercer Way ramps to head east. That’s likely not too impactful. But the 226 gets hurt badly since it uses the EB I-90 to Factoria ramp.

      1. Thanks for the timely update.

        It looks like there is still an overnight I-90 WB full closure tonight at floating bridge. I wonder how 547 is going to work around that.

        1. The website does not specify where STX 547 is re-routed to.

          But it would be nice if ST could keep the 2 line partially open overnight on these sorts of occasions. I suspect it is not practically feasible.

  7. From my experience, the most speeding occurs south of the identified Sandpoint location. The area identified is actually quite slow, because you are almost always behind someone going near the speed limit, and passing is suicidal. Perhaps there are more crashes, because there the road is narrow and shoulders are very limited; so the road is less forgiving when you speed. But there are fewer speeders.

    If they want revenue, put speed cameras between Seattle Children’s and the entrance to Magnuson.

    If they want to reduce speeds, drop the lanes to 1 in each direction between Seattle Children’s and the entrance to Magnuson.

    1. This is my frequent experience as well; it’s very difficult to speed where they’re intending to put these cameras (the 75 helps with that speed reduction every 15 min or so!). South of 75th where it’s a four-lane road, it’s a bit different.

      If you want to take a lane out each way, though, then run the 75 to Pinehurst station so we have a valid alternative to driving (especially from north of Sand Point). That route pointedly misses the nearest stations at each end before proceeding to ones further away, and makes driving a far better alternative even for those of us who would prefer to take transit.

  8. “If you bing “last car pedestrian fatality in Seattle,” one of the last, if not the last, was at Bellevue Ave & Pine St. Early this year, a car was going south on Bellevue Ave, and made a right turn on Pine, hitting and killing a pedestrian in the crosswalk.”

    That’s my bus stop, and I didn’t know about the fatality. I haven’t had any safety problems with cars at that location. I’m reluctant to cross Bellevue Avenue in the middle of the block though, because even though it’s only two small lanes, there’s a car a few times a minute and they drive relatively fast. So I do cross to get to the Olive or Denny bus stops or the businesses that direction where there is no traffic light, but I don’t cross to get to the Pine Street bus stop because there’s a nice safe traffic light at Pine Street.

    Nathan and I just got out of the Seattle Transit Measure campaign launch at The Pine Box on that block. I’d been thinking Pike-Pine was too narrow for bus lanes, but when Wilson said the STM will include more bus lanes around the city, I started thinking that maybe two or three blocks of bus lanes on Pine from Summit to Melrose or Belmont to Melrose might be possible. Because that’s where severe bus delays occur.

    I see it from the bus stop half the time: it takes a bus two or three light cycles to go one block to cross Bellevue Ave, and then again to cross Melrose Ave. When the westbound light on Bellevue Ave turns green for 20 or 30 seconds, half the time is taken up with cars starting to move, and only half the cars behind Melrose can cross, so if the bus is at the back end of the block it can only get to the front of the block or halfway to the front when the light turns red again. The block in front (between Bellevue and Melrose) clears our or clears halfway, but then several cars turn from Bellevue Ave and fill the remaining spaces, so when the light turns green there’s no space for the cars in the block behind to proceed, and buses are stuck in that traffic.

    SDOT extended the one-way system a couple years ago from 7th Avenue to Melrose Avenue, and it intends to extend it in later phases to Broadway. If we can repurpose the eastbound lane on Pine Street, then there would be room to add a bus lane. And we can also reduce the parking from both sides of the street to the south side, since the bus stops are on the north side.

    So that would be my wish, to get bus lanes on at least those two or three blocks. Six bus routes use the front block, and four use the rear two blocks, so that’s 14 buses an hour, and hopefully more someday if some of the 20-minute route get 15-minute service again.

    1. I really think the one way couplet needs to extend to Broadway, if not all the way to 12th. Pike and Pine can each have a car lane, a bus lane, a parking zone, and one direction bike lane. I think that would even leave some room to expand the sidewalks (badly needed). The one way couplet would also allow better light synchronization, so vehicles can hit 5 green lights in a row.

      As a cyclist it’s nice that both streets have bidirectional bike lanes, but it feels excessive. Going uphill on Pine is rare because Pike is less steep and the downtown couplet already sets the standard.

      1. They both still have stop signs between Bellevue and Broadway that were added in the past several years. Should those be converted to signals?

      2. Those stop signs are mostly on Pike Street. The problematic area I’m talking about has traffic lights every block.

  9. So 5he trend seems to be that Katie only likes cameras that are meant to enforce traffic laws and not the ones meant to help with other crime..

    1. These planned locations have low pedestrian activity, a lower major accident rate and a high proportion of non-residents of Seattle on the street.

      It looks like some speed enforcement can vendor wanted to pick streets with better guaranteed revenue and the City went along with it. The pedestrian safety angle looks like a smokescreen to me — or they would have chosen other street segments.

    2. Why should cities be allowed to store videos of pedestrians not committing crimes while protecting the privacy of drivers endangering other people’s lives?

      1. Many drivers use dash cameras to record and store what happens in the roadway around them. Most stores use security cameras to record and store what happens on their premises. Most modern phones are always listening. The question is should the police and Flock also have such ability?

        I can imagine a world where lost dogs and stolen bikes/cars are easily tracked to recover them. Where hit and runs and other crimes in public can be tracked to their perpetrators, so we see a substantial reduction in crime in public spaces.

        My major problem with the current implementations is the context of them. They are done without public consent: we never voted for mass surveillance 3.0 Accessing to the recordings is poorly regulated: there is evidence of officers have been using recordings for personal stalking, Flock has few rules about what it can do with the data, and it is asymmetric so the public can’t use it to find a lost dog.

        1. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. The issue is if that data gets into the hands of the wrong people and get misused.

          We don’t need a mass surveillance state. If someone is caught, punish them. That will deter crime more. Currently we don’t do that especially in cities like Seattle.

  10. Al keeps saying these areas are low pedestrian but that just isn’t my experience. The Rainier segments are pretty high density, especially the north section, and the Beach section has a well documented history of cars speeding into houses, dangerous passing, etc. And even if they are lower density for pedestrians, Vision Zero includes drivers, too. Preventing dangerous speeding prevents crashes.

    1. Here is an SDOT presentation from a few months ago about the “High Injury Network”. The analysis looked at ALL major injuries and fatalities rather than just those with pedestrians. 3 of the 4 segments getting a speed enforcement camera are not even on the list! Not even a low priority!

      https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Presentation-added-41626.pdf

      The segment near Rainier and I-90 is certainly on the list as a high priority — but so are many other streets not getting speed enforcement cameras.

      It’s also notable that there are no mention of speed enforcement cameras in this presentation.

      It looks to me like this is driven by a recent vendor pitch to generate revenue for the City and themselves. And these are streets where many violators are not Seattle residents.

      That’s not a general criticism of speed enforcement cameras. It’s a criticism of the chosen locations. If it should be city policy to have them, they should be on different streets that are more of a priority. Instead, these chosen segments are street segments with lower income drivers and non-resident drivers — the types of people with less political clout. Let the rich speed but make the poor pay is essentially the approach taken here.

      1. The north Rainier segment is going to have a new layout once the off-ramps from I-90 are in place. Unfortunately, that project isn’t funded and is likely at least 4 years away.

  11. “These cameras are not used for any purposes other than traffic safety”

    Yeah, just like the federal government wasn’t supposed to use DOL data for immigration. Or how they were not supposed to use flock for the same reason. Laws and policies don’t mean anything given the precedent of abuse and the lack of accountability from elected officials which to date, not a single person has been held accountable for anything related to abuse of cameras outside of state law.

  12. They should also use these on HOV and HOT lanes throughout the region, as blatant speeding is rampant on them, to the point I rarely drive in a single-lane HOV/HOT, for enforcement is minimal and aimed at HOV-HOT violators in peak hours, while a tailgater is always imminent and someone flashing their brights a possibility. Dot those lanes with speed cameras, and the flow along these lanes would be much smoother. In addition, speeders who have expired tabs could be ticketed for those on all of the cameras in question (red light/right turn, school, bus lane, etc.), making a dent in the estimated $25 million per year in base rates that the state willingly forfeits plus the uncollected fees above that for Sound Transit and Transportation Benefit Districts throughout the region.

    1. In the UK they have a lot of variable speed zones on the motorways. All of the sign bridges have cameras that record your license plate number with a time stamp. If you arrive at the next sign with an average speed higher than what is shown you get a ticket… automatic. Guess what, people obey the variable speeds like it was a “limit” rather than a suggestion. Variable speeds can help traffic flow but not if people just speed until they have to slam on the brakes.

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