Very soon mo­torists in breach of traf­fic laws, par­tic­u­lar­ly speed­ing and break­ing red lights, will be­gin re­ceiv­ing tick­ets in their mail­box­es. In fact, ac­cord­ing to Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan it will take ef­fect “by year-end or soon­er.”

In the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme for fis­cal year 2019/2020, the min­istry will be al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing for the “de­ploy­ment of five Spot Speed Cam­eras along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way (UBH) and Solomon Ho­choy High­way (SHH).”

The pro­posed lo­ca­tions for the Spot Speed Cam­eras are UBH north­bound (NB) at 2 km south of Ca­roni Riv­er, SHH south­bound (SB) at Freeport In­ter­change, UBH south­bound at Chase Vil­lage, Carlsen Field, Ch­agua­nas (Seereer­am Broth­ers), SHH south­bound at the Gas­par­il­lo over­pass and SHH north­bound at 500m south of Macaulay Bridge, Clax­ton Bay.

In ad­di­tion to the cam­eras, the min­istry will con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing it’s In­tel­li­gent Trans­porta­tion Sys­tem (ITS), called the Na­tion­al Traf­fic Man­age­ment Sys­tem (NTMS), from the Uri­ah But­ler and Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way in­ter­sec­tion to Pi­ar­co and Cou­va re­spec­tive­ly, as well as over­see de­ploy­ment of 35 ad­di­tion­al red light en­force­ment cam­eras.

The roll­out of the amend­ments to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act 48:50 is in op­er­a­tional­iza­tion mode. The el­e­ments in­clude the Red-Light Cam­era Sys­tem, Spot Speed Cam­era En­force­ment Sys­tem, the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem, Re­form of the Fixed Penal­ty Tick­et­ing Sys­tem, Trans­for­ma­tion of Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty and the New Li­cense Plate Sys­tem.

• Red-Light Cam­era. This sys­tem which has been in the pi­lot stage, in­tro­duces au­to­mat­ed cam­era en­force­ment on T&T’s road­ways. When a red light cam­era is in­stalled at a traf­fic light in­ter­sec­tion, pho­tographs or record­ings cap­tured by the red light will be used as ev­i­dence of the breach. This will gen­er­ate a ci­ta­tion no­tice which car­ries a spe­cif­ic fine. The ci­ta­tion no­tice will be mailed out to the reg­is­tered own­er of the ve­hi­cle, who will have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay the said stip­u­lat­ed fine.

• Spot Speed Cam­era En­force­ment. Leg­is­la­tion for the in­tro­duc­tion of a Spot Speed Radar Cam­era Sys­tem is be­ing fi­nal­ized for ear­ly in­tro­duc­tion in Par­lia­ment. This leg­is­la­tion will cre­ate the le­gal frame­work for the use of stand-alone and mo­bile cam­era tech­nol­o­gy with the ca­pac­i­ty to mea­sure the speed of ve­hi­cles. This tech­nol­o­gy will be an ad­di­tion­al fea­ture used to en­force the speed lim­it laws on the na­tion’s roads. It does not re­ly on the pres­ence of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers for speed de­tec­tion.

• De­mer­it Points Sys­tem. A sys­tem of award­ing penal­ty points against a per­son for the com­mis­sion of of­fences and traf­fic vi­o­la­tions un­der this Act or En­force­ment and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Act or the Reg­u­la­tions made un­der both pieces of leg­is­la­tion. This change in the law was in­tro­duced via Act 21 of 2003. How­ev­er, no reg­u­la­tions were en­act­ed to give ef­fect to the penal­ty points sys­tem. The points will be ac­cu­mu­lat­ed on one’s dri­ver’s per­mit record.

• Re­form of the Fixed Penal­ty Tick­et­ing. The re­form in­cludes the in­tro­duc­tion of key im­prove­ments to the traf­fic tick­et­ing sys­tem (fixed penal­ty sys­tem). Dri­vers is­sued a fixed penal­ty no­tice, com­mon­ly known as a traf­fic tick­et, will have the op­tion of go­ing to ap­proved places through­out the coun­try to pay their fines as op­posed to the courts.

• Trans­for­ma­tion of the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty. Cre­ation of a Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles Au­thor­i­ty will pro­vide the ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal frame­work to strength­en the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion to func­tion in a 21st Cen­tu­ry en­vi­ron­ment, us­ing the best in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy re­sources avail­able to reg­is­ter mo­tor ve­hi­cles and of­fer mod­ern on­line ser­vices.

• New Li­cence Plate Sys­tem. The new sys­tem that will car­ry Ra­dio Fre­quen­cy Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (RFID) fea­tures for tag­ging of mo­tor ve­hi­cles for ef­fec­tive traf­fic man­age­ment pur­pos­es. Each li­cence plate will car­ry unique RFID fea­tures linked to the mo­tor ve­hi­cle. This will as­sist law en­force­ment of­fi­cers in the ef­fi­cient in­ves­ti­ga­tion of crimes in­volv­ing mo­tor ve­hi­cles as well as the il­le­gal man­u­fac­ture of li­cence plates for crim­i­nal pur­pos­es.

As it re­lates to the cam­era tick­et­ing sys­tem, the back end soft­ware has al­ready been com­plet­ed and test­ing and train­ing is tak­ing place and is 98.9 per cent com­plet­ed. The de­ploy­ment of the 35 ad­di­tion­al Red Light En­force­ment cam­eras will take place at pro­posed lo­ca­tions in three phas­es.