Question 1: Give us the breakdown of the kinds of tickets being issued.
Data we obtained from the Department of Finance shows that last year, the city charged drivers $23.8 million from 595,102 speeding camera tickets ($40 per ticket) and $11.7 million from 155,417 red light camera tickets. ($75 each).
Drivers were also charged $13.2 million for 231,707 parking tickets. The most common was not paying a parking meter which is only a $32 fine, but fines can reach up to $502 for parking in a handicap spot.
Question 2: That’s obviously a lot of tickets, but how does it compare to other cities?
Baltimore has more traffic cameras and more tickets than many other cities we’ve investigated.
Austin TX has no red light cameras and issued only 17,000 traffic tickets last year.
Las Vegas just over 20,000 tickets.
Nashville also just over 20,000 in 2023.
New York City gave out roughly the same amount of speeding/red light tickets as Baltimore, even though the population is over 15 times larger.
Question 3: How much money is this for the city in the grand scheme of things?
And that would be if all the tickets actually got paid - which they’re not.
Only 59% of tickets were actually paid last year. In total the city charged $48.7 million and collected only $28.4 million.
Still, that’s a higher percentage of revenue than the other cities we just mentioned, arguably giving police officers more incentive to issue tickets. Outlets like
USA Today have reported on small towns like Peninsula, Ohio and Coffee City,
Texas that are writing 10 to 20 traffic tickets per person because their city relies on those tickets for a third or more of their budget.