Sources and methodology

Los Angeles speed safety systems

Locations and the operational label come from the Camera Systems layer on the web map linked from LADOT's Speed Safety System page. Street, cross streets, posted speed, and council district come from the September 2026 council-district lists, joined on the system id. The September lists all said Construction. The live layer, retrieved for this build, is newer and is the status shown on the map. Coordinates are the published points, not a field survey.

Program rules, the fine schedule, and the warning period are quoted from LADOT's use policy, impact report, program page, and an October 20, 2026 city clerk committee report. Those documents are linked from the enforcement page.

Chicago and Washington speed cameras

Chicago's speed camera locations come from the City of Chicago Data Portal dataset of speed camera locations, with the published latitude and longitude. A first-operational date on or before the extract day is shown as issuing citations. A later date stays planned. Washington's speed cameras come from the District Department of Transportation automated safety camera table. Only rows whose enforcement type is speed are imported as speed cameras. Red-light, stop-sign, and truck-restriction rows from that table are separate layers. School-bus rows in this extract have no coordinates, so they are not pinned. Clear-lane rows are left out. A DDOT status of warning, configuration, or test is not shown as issuing citations. Portable devices keep the published coordinate and a note that the device can move.

OpenStreetMap

Plate readers are features tagged surveillance:type=ALPR or ANPR. A device is placed on the Flock layer only when the manufacturer, brand, operator, or model text contains the word Flock. Other plate readers stay on the other-ALPR layer. Speed cameras use highway=speed_camera. Community-mapped speed cameras are labeled unconfirmed, not active. Red-light pins from OpenStreetMap are the device in an enforcement=traffic_signals relation, a traffic signal tagged for that enforcement, or a surveillance node with a red-light tag. Those pins say unverified and are not counted with the official red-light lists. Map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License.

What was not copied

DeFlock and FlockHopper publish maps that are also built mostly from OpenStreetMap. This project queries Overpass itself instead of redistributing their tiles or calling FlockHopper's servers. The EFF Atlas of Surveillance is agency context on the ALPR page, not a set of pins. A community Los Angeles list was read as a cross-check and is not the geometry source. Speed enforcement relations are not turned into cameras, because a relation center is not a device. A red-light pin is only the device member, or a traffic signal or surveillance node that itself carries the red-light tag.

Philadelphia and Portland publish speed-camera locations as blocks or intersections, not poles. Those rows were geocoded with the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder and keep a note that the coordinate is the address or intersection match. A Census match in the wrong city was dropped. Seattle's fixed school-zone cameras come from the city's own point layer. San Francisco's fixed speed sites come from DataSF under the Open Data Commons PDDL. Daily citation rows were collapsed to one point per site, and the citation totals were not copied. Arlington County's school-zone photo speed cameras come from the Virginia Open Data Portal. Retired rows and rows marked inactive were left out. New York City's old open-data location file is empty. School-zone speed and red-light approaches are pinned where a fiscal-year 2027 camera summons names two streets and those streets meet once on the city street centerline. The coordinate is an official-derived intersection, not a pole. Denver's photo speed program uses vans that move, and its four named intersections are red-light cameras, so Denver was not pinned.

Malibu's five Pacific Coast Highway systems are two directions each, placed at the named intersections. The city says the cameras are in testing, the warning period begins in November 2026, and no warnings or citations are being issued. Oakland's matched segments are midpoints of Census intersections and are marked as issuing citations because the city says tickets began March 15, 2026. Long Beach's matched segments are in the warning period that began October 7, 2026, with citations scheduled for December 7, 2026. Segments whose two ends did not both match in the named city were left out. San Jose's speed points come from the city GIS layer. That layer leaves status and install date empty, and the program page still calls the sites proposed, so those pins are not labeled as issuing citations. Red-light cameras are on this map for New York City, Chicago, the District of Columbia, Philadelphia, Arlington County, Seattle, San José, Maryland counties, Mesa, New Orleans, Tacoma, Lakeland, Boulder, Scottsdale, and Oahu. Philadelphia's pins are Census matches of the 38 intersections on the Parking Authority page; two names did not match and were left out. Arlington's photo red-light points have a blank Active field, so they are not labeled as issuing citations. Seattle's file and San José's four red-light points do not publish a citation status, so those pins stay unconfirmed. Montgomery County, Baltimore City, and Baltimore County pins are the counties' published points. Active, Final, and ACTIVE on those layers are not citation flags. Prince George's County speed and red-light rows are unconfirmed: the portal states no license and the views were last updated in June 2015. Denver was not pinned.

Basemap

The street map uses OpenFreeMap vector tiles, which are OpenStreetMap data under the Open Database License, styled with street names and building footprints through zoom 19. Satellite view uses USGS The National Map imagery through zoom 16, then USGS NAIP aerial photos closer in. Both are public domain. A Map / Satellite switch on the map remembers the choice in this browser. Neither tile host receives an account or a saved location.

Duplicates

Two official camera ids are never merged, including two Chicago, District, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Arlington, Malibu, Oakland, Long Beach, San Jose, New York, or Maryland locations on the same block. An OpenStreetMap speed camera within 100 meters is folded into a Los Angeles system when the street name overlaps. Other official points use a 40 meter match. The official point is kept. Distinct mapped devices at the same corner stay separate.