Staten Island’s New Speed Cameras Fined Us $20 Million in 2025, Quietly Multiplying

Staten Island’s surge in speed camera fines spotlights the intersection of road safety, municipal revenue, and urban discontent.

Drivers on Staten Island might suspect they are being watched—and with some justification. By late November 2025, the borough’s network of roughly 230 permanent and mobile speed cameras had issued a staggering 400,620 summonses, filling city coffers to the tune of about $20 million. For locals, the ever-present flash of a speed camera is now as much a part of the landscape as the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

For years, the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has added new cameras at a steady clip, touting improved safety while keeping quiet about exact locations. Open data sleuths, however, have partially pierced the veil, revealing a smattering of new installations along key corridors. Each $50 infraction ticket adds up quickly, especially when multiplied by 400,000-plus. Unsurprisingly, many Staten Islanders now view the camera network less as a shield for schoolchildren and more as a standing threat to their wallets.

The program’s stated aim is to slow cars and save lives—worthy goals, certainly, given the city’s density and traffic record. DOT data suggest the borough’s new cameras cluster near major thoroughfares: stretches of Hylan Boulevard, Victory Boulevard, and Forest Avenue. City officials stress that these devices are placed in “school speed zones,” in theory shielding students during arrival and dismissal.

Yet the spate of fines tells a more complicated tale. Issuing over 1,300 tickets per day on Staten Island alone, the camera system far outpaces the borough’s population share (some 500,000) and suggests more than mere deterrence is at work. Are Staten Island’s drivers uniquely reckless? Or are they simply easier targets in a borough notorious for paltry mass transit options and outsized car dependence?

The immediate effect is clear: traffic slows at camera sites, drivers curse their luck (and City Hall), and city revenue swells. At $50 a shot, fines are low enough to avoid ruin but high enough to sting. For Staten Islanders—long accustomed to paying bridge tolls and getting short shrift on transit—the program feels like another municipal shakedown. Civic groups argue that camera clusters often appear in revenue-rich, rather than risk-rich, strips.

Beyond local grumbling, there are second-order ripples. On the plus side, hospital data point to fewer crash injuries near high-camera corridors citywide, and studies elsewhere (London, Stockholm, Toronto) have linked automated enforcement to modest but noticeable drops in pedestrian deaths. Insurance companies, never ones to ignore statistical trends, may eventually reward safer boroughs with lower premiums.

But the drawbacks mount as cameras proliferate. The city’s annual revenue haul—$20 million from Staten Island alone—raises uncomfortable questions about priorities: if the goal is safety, why not plough every cent directly into pedestrian improvements? Critics spy a “fine-to-fund” feedback loop, with enforcement morphing into de facto taxation. The public’s cynicism grows as cameras pop up in tight clumps, just past confusingly marked zones, or near the city’s infamous potholes—a cruel double whammy for inattentive motorists.

Speed cameras as national policy and international import

New York is hardly alone in this balancing act. Across America, speed cameras have soared in popularity—and controversy. Washington, D.C.’s network now produces more than $100 million annually, while Chicago’s mayoral election in 2023 hinged, in part, on public angling for camera relief. Meanwhile, Oslo and Helsinki have notched downward trends in road fatalities by pairing relentless enforcement with redesigned “slow streets”—an option New York has embraced only gingerly.

The national picture portends further expansion, driven by easy-to-operate technology and budget shortfalls. Yet the international evidence also suggests diminishing returns: beyond a certain density, new cameras yield ever-smaller safety gains but ever-greater citizen resentment. Staten Island, with its deep-seated car culture and sense of marginalisation by city authorities, offers a pungent test case.

Where does this leave New York’s only suburban borough? It may be that the program’s reach, and the steady trickle of fines, is already nudging driving culture towards greater wariness—and, in time, safer roads. But the city’s opacity about camera placement, and the suspicion that revenue targets drive policy more than safety, continues to rankle. Few would weep if future upgrades included more transparency, clearer signage, and a public reckoning over whether cameras are truly a cure or simply another municipal vice.

In our view, automated enforcement—well-targeted, honestly deployed, and modest in number—can serve as a useful tool for urban safety. But in the absence of open data, forthright communication, and visible street improvements funded by the receipts, Staten Islanders will remain justified in their scepticism. New York should show the courage to treat residents as adults: share the data, post the signs, earmark the revenue, and embrace a broader public debate about the kind of city it wants to be. That may not eliminate grumbling, but it would certainly elevate the dialogue—and perhaps, finally, slow the Borough of Parks just enough. ■