Tacoma cameras logged nearly 400,000 speeding detections in a month

Two speed cameras in Tacoma recorded nearly 400,000 speeding detections during their first month, but the city’s citation process is capped at up to 100 randomly selected registered vehicle owners per camera each day.

The News Tribune, citing city data, reported that the cameras recorded the detections from Sept. 14 through Oct. 11, across about 515,000 vehicle passages. The cameras are at Norpoint Way NE and SR-509/Marine View Drive. The city began operating them Sept. 14 with a one-month warning period; after it ended Oct. 14, the city said it would begin mailing $145 civil infractions.

Detections are not a count of drivers or tickets i

Nearly 400,000 detections does not mean 400,000 different drivers were caught or cited. A vehicle could be recorded more than once. The reported totals amount to roughly 77% of vehicle passages being recorded over the 40-mph limit, according to The News Tribune.

As a sense of scale, the nearly 400,000 detections over 28 days average about 14,300 per day. The post-warning selection cap is at most 200 owners per day across both cameras. Those figures measure different things: the cap applies only to randomly selected vehicles recorded above a speed threshold, which the city has not disclosed. Tacoma Police traffic-enforcement staff review the camera evidence before a citation is issued.

The reported speed breakdown showed that 55% to 60% of detections were less than 10 mph over the limit, while roughly 10% to 12% were more than 10 mph over. The data also included more than 180 instances at 70 mph or faster in the 40-mph zone.

Average speeds fell during the warning period i

Average speeds were lower in the final week than in the first week of warnings: from 44.1 to 43.1 mph in one direction and from 44.4 to 43.7 mph in the other, The News Tribune reported. That is a comparison between two periods in the warning month, not evidence by itself of a lasting change in speeding or crashes.

The city manager said the daily cap reflected vendor processing limits as well as court and administrative costs. The vendor’s CEO said processing the high volume would cost more than the vendor could cover under the arrangement and put processing costs at about $4 per violation. He also said changing driving behavior, rather than fining every detected vehicle, was a key purpose.

Each new camera adds $5,700 a month to vendor costs. The amended contract allows payments of up to $6.7 million over its term; the city paid the vendor about $708,000 in 2025, excluding the new cameras, The News Tribune reported. The city expected to seek bids for a new camera-system contract within about three months of the newspaper’s Oct. 19 report.