About 1,500 tickets incorrectly issued by Ottawa speed cameras

If you got a speeding ticket from a photo radar in Ottawa this summer, it may have been a mistake.

About 1,500 speeding tickets were incorrectly issued at two speed camera locations between July 1 and Aug. 15, a city memo said Wednesday.

“The error has now been resolved and tickets issued in error will be cancelled,” said the memo from Carol Hall, the city’s associate director of traffic services.

One camera is on Abbott Street East between Moss Hill Trail and Shea Road, near Sacred Heart High School in Stittsville.

The other is on Alta Vista Drive between Ayers and Ridgemont avenues, near Ridgemont and St. Patrick’s high schools and Charles H. Hulse Public School.

The speed limit in those areas is 40 km/h from September to June between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m., when the school year is ongoing. At all other times, including during the summer, it’s 50 km/h.

As a result of the administrative error, speeding tickets continued to be issued based on a 40 km/h speed limit in July and August as though school was still in session,” the memo said.

“As of August 16, the enforcement criteria have been updated for each site, and speeding tickets issued after this date are valid.”

Drivers who received tickets in error will be notified by the end of September and their tickets will be cancelled, the city said. They are being asked not to pay their fines.

Those who have paid will be reimbursed by the end of October. They don’t need to take any action to get their money back. Ticket recipients must verify the date and location of their speeding offence to check whether their ticket was issued in error.

The city has also notified the Joint Processing Centre in Toronto, where all of Ottawa’s speed camera tickets are processed.

“Communication processes, in addition to the quality of documentation shared with both the Joint Processing Centre and our vendor, have been revised so that such administrative errors do not reoccur in the future,” Hall said in the memo.

“Internal processes have also been adjusted to ensure the timely review of enforcement criteria at sites with a reduced school speed zone.”

Photo radar cameras have garnered the city millions of dollars since they were installed in July 2020. In the first year of the program, more than 101,000 tickets were issued for speeding at eight locations in Ottawa, netting $5.4 million in revenue.