The Iowa Department of Transportation’s new rules governing the placement of speed and red light cameras start on Wednesday. That has Sioux City police looking at the cameras that are now in use.
The rules govern cameras on state roadways, so police Captain Mel Williams says the city cameras at two different intersections one block from each other will see different impacts. “Right now those camera systems are set up at Gordon and Nebraska to control traffic on Gordon Drive, which is a primary roadway. So those fall definitely within the rules,” Williams says. “Gordon and Pierce controls traffic that flows on Pierce Street — which is not a primary roadway in this state — so that system should not be affected by these rules.”
Williams says the city will have a couple of months to file reports on the red light cameras before the state before any decision would be made to take them down. He is not optimistic that DOT would allow the cameras to stay in place. “I would say that director (Paul) Trombino, to this point in his tenure as the director of the DOT has not approved a single camera system in the state of Iowa,” Williams says.
The city’s use of cameras on Interstate 29 would end on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Woody Gottburg, KSCJ, Sioux City)