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Drivers who modify their vehicles with aftermarket exhausts and rev their engines to create gunshot-like bursts in the middle of the night could soon face fines issued by an automated camera if one councillor has her way.
Speeding and traffic complaints are the main issues heard by city councillors in any municipality.
Now Ward 3 Coun. Corey Kimpson is considering introducing a new mitigation measure to her colleagues around the Cambridge council horseshoe.
"We keep hearing about speeding and loud cars from a lot of members of the community so there are a number of things we can look at doing," said Kimpson.
One of the new measures that has piqued Kimpson's interest is the automated noise camera.
The devices work similar to an automated speed camera by snapping a photo of any vehicle and license plate that registers over a pre-determined decibel range.
Kimpson thinks this could be a valuable way to prevent the annoying and sometimes shocking rumble and pop from modified exhausts.
"You would either have to have someone out there with a specific device at the right time to be able to read the noise level coming off cars, but you could attach an audio reader to the automated speed cameras. It's a two birds with one stone situation," she added.
All over the city, ward councillors have been searching for ways to help slow down speeders.
In Ward 8, councillor Nicholas Ermeta told CambridgeToday that when he was door knocking last fall, speeding was one of the most asked about issues.
In Ward 6, councillor Adam Cooper has lobbied for residents whose homes back onto McQueen Shaver Boulevard and fear speeding cars will end up in their backyards.
"These are people that are going deliberately to speed to, you know, I don't know whether they're testing the cars or just doing it for the thrill, but they've created a bit of a drag strip there," Cooper told CambridgeToday.
Kimpson wants to see something done about speeding in the city and recognizes the difficulty of trying to get things done at the city level.
"For the noise cameras we would have to go through police," she said. "As a city councillor we can't direct the police what to do. Many of these roads are regional roads as well."
She provides some of the ways the city can calm traffic by installing raised intersections in new developments, bollards going down roads and narrower streets.
The City of Cambridge recently spent over $50,000 for new traffic calming measures including, rotating radar message boards and two-dimensional cutouts featuring children urging drivers to slow down.
Cambridge is expanding 40km/h speed limits across the entire city next year, while permanently reducing speed limits in school zones to 30km/h.
Municipalities like Toronto, and recently Waterloo, have investigated the use of noise cameras.
Kimpson is waiting to read a report from Toronto about the effectiveness of noise cameras before she brings the idea to council.
The City of Edmonton, which recently ran a pilot project of the noise cameras, said there were a few hiccups in their findings.
A study found loud sirens and trucks using engine brakes would unnecessarily trigger the camera, forcing administration staff to manually scrub video footage at a cost to taxpayers.
Despite sending out over 1,600 tickets, the equipment cost the city $192,000 for monitoring, installation, maintenance and software use, while the fines collected only generated $98,000.
Kimpson and her counterparts on council are still looking for solutions to help their constituents, but need to community to be vocal and always report their issues.
"We won't be able to do everything we want to help those in our ward, but what we can do is collect all the information and compile complaints and take them to the proper source," Kimpson said. "If we create almost a heat map and prove that something needs to be done, it will be hard to argue with that."
