With barely weeks to renew the city’s school-zone speed-cam authority before schools reopen Sept. 5, all the politicians are still playing Kabuki theater.
The latest: City Hall’s announcement that the cameras — which still work, but can’t trigger tickets unless the legislature acts — have recorded 132,235 speed racers zooming through school zones at more than 10 mph above the limit since July 25.
That’s just cause for lawmakers to re-up the city’s ticketing power. Team de Blasio reports that a full 81 percent of vehicles issued one speed-cam violation from 2014 to 2016 never got a second one. In all, speeding fell by 63 percent in zones with the cameras.
But this doesn’t mean the city’s helpless if Albany won’t act: It can install speed bumps and stop signs, or deploy radar signs and actual traffic cops with radar guns.
The NYPD issued 149,955 speeding tickets in 2017, up 93 percent over the years before the mayor’s Vision Zero traffic-safety initiative began. It plainly can redeploy resources to school zones if the cameras aren’t restored. It’s not ideal (enforcement elsewhere will suffer), but it’s an option.
Yet the better option is for state leaders to grow up. Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan says he’s willing to restore (but not expand) the speed cams, as long as Gov. Andrew Cuomo promises not to exploit the required special session to grandstand on abortion.
Cuomo’s been saying he won’t call lawmakers back unless Flanagan first promises to pass a speed-cam bill. Why not just call his bluff? Summon the Legislature for the express purpose of having Flanagan pass a renewal bill — which after all has broad bipartisan Senate support.
The Assembly, which has only passed an expansion bill, will have to pass it, too — but the votes are obviously there. Then lawmakers can take up the expansion question next year — after elections that could well make Flanagan the minority leader.
With young lives at stake, someone has to blink.