BERNALILLO COUNTY, N.M. – The warning period for the new Bernalillo County speed cameras is over. This round of cameras is part of a new project to get people to slow down –  a serious issue in the metro. 

The six speed cameras have been installed for a few weeks now, but Wednesday is the first day your speeding will actually get you a ticket. 

County project leaders say in the initial weeks the cameras were installed, they collectively caught 2,600 drivers speeding. Those drivers only got warnings in the mail. 

The county says, as of Wednesday afternoon, the speed cameras have caught about 200 speeders. They say that’s just a rough initial estimate.

The cameras are on Isleta Boulevard with some on Bridge, and Paradise Boulevard. The county says they had a list of priority areas to place these cameras.

If you get a speeding ticket through these new cameras, you could face a $100 fine or a $25 fine, and four hours of community service. That community service would be with the county’s new Clean Team picking up trash in unincorporated parts of the county. 

KOB 4 asked county project leaders how they plan to work together with the city with both of these speed projects live now. 

“The way it works is that the city and the county, they maintain certain corridors and facilities, and so we look at that as a whole. So we wouldn’t put any infrastructure on their streets and vice versa,” said Antonio Jaramillo, Bernalillo County’s director of Operations and Maintenance. “We also have monthly meetings with the city to kind of collaborate and amongst other things, but also the speed enforcement cameras, making sure that, you know, we’re not overlapping 

Jaramillo says the city did create its Automated Speed Enforcement project first. But the county has been working on its program for about two years. 

He says the city has given them a lot of insight on lessons learned and what they can do a little differently. 

We also learned just how the money from citations will be used.

“Our vendor, you know, they do receive a $25 fee for every citation. The remaining funds come to us where we would then, you know, cover the cost of running the program. Half of that funding, after that’s all said and done, half of that funding goes to the state, and the other half will come to us directly, where we will use that funding to increase safety on all our corridors,” Jaramillo said. 

Jaramillo says the goal is not to make a ton of money off these speeding tickets, it’s just to create awareness of speeding issues in high crash zones. 

The county uses a different vendor than the city does. This is just the first phase of the program.