Predicting Albany’s Speed Cam & Red Light Revenue - 2026-27

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City of Albany residents are now aware of the deficit Albany faces moving forward and our financial crisis.  During the 2027 City of Albany budget cycle we will put out analysis on specific topics that help anyone understand the decisions, risks, and outcomes behind the budget numbers.  In this piece we examine the budgeting and reality of the school speed camera and red light camera citation programs.  These are programs that have historically had revenue generation budget estimation issues, which we noted in the Summer of 2025 in this report.

On September 30th, the NYS comptroller issued a report noting overestimations in revenue from traffic violation fines (parking violation fines, red light cameras, handicapped parking tickets, boot charges, etc.). To directly quote the Comptroller’s Report:

“When developing the 2025 adopted budget, City officials relied on third-party vendor data to estimate the program’s potential revenue earnings. Despite the revenue shortfall in 2025, the 2026 adopted budget included estimated revenue of $10.5 million for traffic violation fines. Based on 2025 actual results, we project the City will receive $7.6 million in 2026, resulting in a potential revenue shortfall of $2.9 million.“

In this analysis we research two questions:

1) What is the budget impact of over-estimated, underperforming revenue in 2026? 

We predict that revenue will fall short of projections by over $500,000.

2) Does the revenue overestimation carry over into 2027?

Yes, in our analysis we predict net revenue from these programs to be slightly over $1.5 million while the 2027 Proposed Budget predicts net revenue of $3.4 million.  

In 2025 when we predicted yearly revenue we under-predicted revenue and it is possible that this analysis underpredicts revenue as well.  Therefore we would suggest a reasonable range for 2027 actual revenue will be between $1.5-2.0 million, well below the 2027 proposed budget figures.

This analysis highlights a point that we continue to make - when a proposed budget contains revenue and expenditure line items with wide 6- and 7-figure swings in the 2027 budget versus prior years, and when there is no explanation or justification provided, we have no idea of the certainty and risk behind these numbers.

In Albany’s 2026 Adopted Budget and Albany’s 2nd Quarter Report, Red Light camera revenue was projected at $400,000  and reported at $161,000 respectively. Speed camera revenue was proposed as $4,000,000 and revenue through Q2 was reported at $1,544,000. In both instances Q2 revenue fell short of the anticipated revenue. Just projecting out the income for the remainder of the year yields a shortfall of over $500,000 from these two revenue sources.  In the 2027 Proposed Budget released on October 1st by Mayor Applyrs Red Light and Speed Camera were projected to yield $312,688 and $3,068,201, respectively. 

Prior to the 2027 Proposed Budget announcement, Albany Data Stories filed a FOIL request with the city of Albany to receive all red light / speed camera records from Oct. 7th, 2024 through Aug. 9th, 2026. We specifically requested each individual record to include date, time, fine, status (i.e., paid, new collections, etc.), vehicle speed, etc.  Our initial goal was to build upon our 2025 Speed / Red Light Camera story; however, given recent events, we altered our approach to focus this story on the revenue earned to date and project the remainder of 2026 and 2027.  

We plan a separate story that jumps further into the data, revealing excess speed, intersections with the most violations, and more.

Starting with the red light citations, we divided the fees into the different categories and separated them by year. Note that citations began in October of 2024 and data for 2026 only exists through the beginning of August. 

Explaining our work

On page 7 of the 2nd Quarter Report we see that the 2025 Red Light Camera Fines are listed at $161,000. We want to make it clear that we do not possess inside knowledge regarding the algebra that were used to generate the values listed in the report; therefore, we’re moving forward with our best guess on how these numbers were generated.  It’s believed that the $161k is derived from fines for the first two quarters of 2025 listed as paid and collections. This gets us ~7,650 fines amounting to $475,600, and after correcting for the fact Albany receives $17 for a $50 fine, we arrive at ~$161,000. That same report lists $157,000 in revenue for through Q2 2026; however, that value is harder to understand due to a significant reduction in Red Light Camera Fines through that same time period. In attempt to reproduce the $157,000 value, we start by summing all paid and new fines for 2026 and arrive at 5,780 fines, nearly 1,900 less than 2025, and include the remainder of fines from 2025 in collections (~$111,000) we arrive at $463,000, and again accounting for the $17 of every $50 gets us to ~$157,000. 

Revisiting the proposed 2027 value of $312,688, we can see that this is roughly double the Red Light Camera revenue through Q2 2026, which we feel is not strongly supported because this estimate likely includes higher collections from 2025 than what would be projected through the end of 2026. Based on current trends we would expect roughly $100,000 in paid revenue and between $3-40,000 in collections for the remaining 2026. Even if all projected fines for 2026 are paid and all of last year's collections were included into the 2026 revenue, the maximum revenue we’d expect to reach is shy of $250,000 ($138,000 from ~8100 fines PLUS $111,000 from 2025 collections).  Therefore, we arrive at $150,000 as a realistic revenue estimate for red light cameras in 2027, assuming a constant number of fines issued compared with 2026 and collecting all revenue from fines that went into collections.

To help highlight the drop in red light fines from 2025 to 2026, we graphed the number of fines issued each month along with the average excess speed (speed of vehicle when the infraction occurred with respect to the location where it occurred).  This data shows that the revenue projections Albany used from a 3rd party were likely developed only using data through September 2025 at the latest.

 We performed the same analysis for speeding fines, which are shown in the table below. 

Explaining our Work

Revisiting the Q2 Report we see revenues of $1,544k and $1,300k listed for the first two quarters of 2026 and 2025, respectively. The value of $1,300k is obtained by simply multiplying the total revenue from paid fines ($3,793,342 from 68,588 fines) received through the first two quarters of 2025, and assuming Albany received $17 of every $50. Again, we look at the 2026 value and have to add Q3 and Q4 collections from 2025 together with paid and new fines to reach the reported $1,544k. The proposed speed camera revenue in the 2027 budget is listed as 3,068,201, which like the 2027 projected red light revenue is for all practical purposes double the Q2 reported value.  When we perform the same math (gruesome detail below) we project a maximum revenue for 2026 of nearly $2,000,000, half of the adopted 2026 value and 1 million less than the proposed 2027 value. Furthermore, because our inflated 2026 value assumes all 2025 collections are paid in 2026, the maximum projected 2027 value would be $1,381,000. It’s more likely that 2026 falls short of $2,000,000 and that 2027 exceeds $1,400,000 given how we calculated the maximum expected revenue for 2026.

(Gruesome Math: Honestly not that bad)

Using 2025 data, summing only the fines that were paid or in collections we get approximately 78 percent, and 22% go to collections. These are similar numbers to what we calculated with the red light fines. Looking at the 2026 numbers we see that 35,575 fines were paid and 16,552 are new, with collections having a negligible contribution, which yields a total of 52,127 fines issued for 2026 through August 12th, which is approximately 60% of all days in a year. Assuming (big assumption) a constant number of fines will be issued for the remainder of the year, we project a total of 73,000 fines issued. 35,575 of those fines were already paid, generating $17 each, or $604,775.

Of the remaining 37,425 fines, assuming 78% payment, we would expect an additional 29,192 paid fines, or $496,247 in revenue for 2026. If we assume that all fines in collection for 2025 were paid, Albany would receive at most an additional $642,583. Furthermore, we added all 2025 fines labeled new for 2025 and got an additional $255,833. This would put the maximum projected income from speed cameras for 2026 at $1,999,438.  Therefore, we’d only expect 8,233 fines to go to collections for 2027, and assuming a constant number of fines issued in 2026 and 2027 we project 73,000 fines issued. Assuming all fines are paid, this will net $1,241,000 and along with $139,961 from 2026 collections a we project a maximum revenue from speed cameras for 2027 to be $1,381,000. 

(End of Math)

As before, we wanted to visualize the data to better put into context the projected numbers. Do the trends support what we calculate? As with the red light camera data, we plotted the number of speeding fines issued each month along with the average excess speed of the driver (relative to the speed limit where the fine occurred). 

There is a clear trend in the decline in revenue for driving behavior-based citations.  We expect two root causes for this: drivers begin abiding by the laws over time and drivers find alternate routes that avoid citation locations.   

The red light and speed camera fines reported in Q2 paint an optimistic picture of current and future revenue. Those numbers appear inflated using expected revenue from fines currently in collection. Furthermore, trends for both red light and speed camera data suggest, on average, less fines for 2026 when compared with 2025. This should have resulted in further reductions to the estimated revenue projected by Albany for 2027; however, the proposed budget seems to have adopted double the reported Q2 2026 values. We feel this is a gross overestimation of revenue we’d likely see based on the material we’ve presented above. The projected $3,000,000 from speed fines will likely fall short by over $1,000,000, and the red light fines by about $100,000.

Furthermore, as Albany Data Stories has pointed out in our past story regarding lost revenue from speed cameras, we have an unfavorable contract with GATSO, receiving 34% of the money generated with a fine. If Albany received 60% (assume an additional $13 per fine), more consistent with other municipalities that have contracts with GATSO, the revenue would have increased by over 75%, or approximately $2.4m strictly using the figures from the Q2 report.