Despite the Government of Alberta’s tightening of rules, mobile photo radars will be set up across Calgary neighbourhoods in the coming weeks.  

In a statement, Calgary Police said the new locations will address community concerns and improve road safety.  

Mobile photo radar will be placed on Crowchild Trail, Glenmore Trail, Deerfoot Trail, Macleod Trail, and Sarcee Trail. 

The decision comes just six weeks after Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP) announced they are banning photo radar on the ring roads around Calgary and Edmonton and hinted that more bans could be coming soon.

According to a statement from the UCP, their decision to crack down on photo radar came after they received several complaints from Albertans who said that the tool was simply being used as a cash cow by municipal governments, which receive 60% of the tax revenue from the ticket (The province receives the other 40%.)

In a recent interview with The Counter Signal, Minister of Transportation Devin Dreeshen spoke of the “fishing holes,” saying he thinks that an ongoing review of the photo radar sites will show that municipal governments have been abusing the tool to serve as a revenue-generating scheme. 

As Calgary presses ahead with more photo radar locations, the UCP will be conducting a review that Dreeshen believes will identify more fishing hole locations. 

“The big distinction we’re going to make is if there’s a site where there’s no traffic safety concerns, there’s been no accidents, no fatalities, that type of site obviously isn’t about safety,” he said. 

Dreeshen said there’s a handful of “bad sites” that take in the vast majority of the revenue.

In Alberta, photo radar generated a total of $171 million in 2022/23.

Photo radar is so lucrative in Alberta that some municipal governments budget for money collected from tickets.