LA Speed Cameras

Who profits from LA's speed cameras

A private company gets a flat fee for every camera, every month, however many tickets go out. By law, the rest of the fine money pays the program's costs and then street safety fixes: speed humps, crosswalks and other changes that slow drivers down (what the law calls traffic calming). None of it goes to the city's general budget.

Where a ticket goes

Move the slider to see a year of fines once all 125 cameras are issuing tickets. Program costs come out first; by law, everything left goes to street safety fixes.

Assumption. Starts at 20.4, San Francisco's rate: about 163,900 tickets from 33 cameras, August 2025 through March 2026 (KQED).

Fine mix (assumption)

In San Francisco, about half of tickets were for going more than 15 mph over (ABC7), so we put half at $50. How the other half splits between $100, $200 and $500 is our guess. Average fine: $80.00.

Assumption. Starts at 50%: about two months in, San Francisco had collected $600,000 of the $1.2 million it billed, with some tickets not yet due (ABC7). Unpaid tickets, low-income discounts and first-time warnings all lower it.

Where a year of fines goes
Tickets a year
930,750
Fines collected a year
$37.2M
Verra Mobility
$7.3M
LADOT staff
$1.2M
Left for street safety fixes
$28.7M
Break-even
4.7
tickets per camera per day

The costs are the contract's: $6,675,000 a year to Verra, up to $625,000 a year in postage after year one (council file 26-0707), and $1.2 million in LADOT staff (Impact Report). Year one is heavier: the postage budget is $2.5 million, and the $4.78 million fronted from Measures R and M is paid back first.

Against the real numbers

Yearly dollars on one scale
  • LADOT's yearly cost estimate, $7.95M: Impact Report, Table 1. LADOT also told the council it "anticipates full cost recovery in each operating year" (council file 26-0707).
  • San Francisco, about $17M a year from 33 cameras, annualized from its first five months of fines: New York Post, Mar 17, 2026.
  • About $64M a year for LA: the estimate of the National Motorists Association, which opposes speed cameras, scaled from San Francisco (same story). The city has not published a revenue forecast.

What the law allows. Revenue "shall first be used to recover program costs." Then: "Any excess revenue shall be used for traffic-calming measures within three years of the end of the fiscal year in which the excess revenue was received." If the city doesn't spend it, it "shall revert to the Active Transportation Program," a state fund. The law names no other use. California Vehicle Code 22426(g), added by AB 645.

The same section requires the city to keep spending its own money on these fixes at its average for the 2016-17 to 2018-19 fiscal years, so fine money is added to that budget, not swapped in for it.

The company: Verra Mobility

The cameras are run by Verra Mobility (legal name American Traffic Solutions), a company traded on the Nasdaq. It also runs the camera programs in San Francisco, Oakland, Glendale and Long Beach.

$4,450per camera, per month, 125 cameras for 60 monthsCouncil file 26-0707
$38.4Mcontract ceiling ($38,375,000), May 1, 2026 to Jan 1, 2032Transportation Committee report
No bidsLA reused Oakland's contract, at Oakland's pricesWestside Current

The ceiling is $33.4 million in camera fees plus up to $5 million to mail notices. LA did not run its own bidding process, and the mayor waived the usual review.

State law limits how Verra can be paid. It cannot earn money per ticket or take a percentage of fines, it cannot decide who gets a ticket, and it cannot sell or reuse the data it collects (Senate analysis of AB 645).

The yearly bill

$6.68M a yearto Verra: 125 cameras × $4,450 a month, before postageCouncil file 26-0707
133,500$50 tickets a year it takes to pay that fee$6,675,000 ÷ $50
$7.95Myearly running cost, per LADOT: about $1.2M LADOT staff and $6.75M equipment and vendor. One-time startup: about $500,000.Impact Report, Table 1

LADOT's $7.95 million was an estimate made before the contract set the fee and postage. The slider above uses the contract figures.

Who paid to start it

The city fronted $4.78 million in local transportation sales tax: $589,262 from Measure R and $4,185,912 from Measure M (council file 26-0707). Fine revenue pays it back first.

So the money doesn't go to the city's general budget, and it can't patch budget holes like the more than $200 million overspend the city faced when the cameras were approved in March 2026. LADOT has told the City Council it expects no immediate impact on the General Fund.

The case for and against

Supporters point to the deaths. Speeding caused about one in five fatal crashes in Los Angeles in 2024, and 290 people died on the city's streets in 2025. San Francisco reports up to a 72% drop in speeding on corridors with cameras. The City Council approved the program 14 to 0.

Opponents of the state law included the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Black Lives Matter California, mostly over privacy and fairness to low-income drivers. Others object to a no-bid contract and to a program that has to keep tickets flowing to pay its bills.

A flat fee cuts both ways. Verra earns the same whether drivers slow down or not. But the city owes a fixed bill every month for five years.

Drivers with low incomes can get the fine cut by 50% to 80%, pay in installments of $25 a month or less, or do community service instead.

Sources

Checked October 29, 2026. See something wrong? Email [email protected].