Road Warrior: Between cops and cameras, almost 170,000 speeding citations issued. Here's the form those citations can take.

OF COPS AND CAMERAS: Following up on a column from September, Allan Baber noted that 60% of the speeding citations issued by the city’s automated speed cameras had been paid and wanted to know how the Albuquerque Police Department’s rate compared.

The first annual report for the speed cameras found that almost 95,000 speeding citations had been issued in a year. Between May 2022 and May 2023, APD issued 74,327 speeding citations.

But it’s difficult to compare the payment rates. When an APD officer issues a speeding citation, there are more forms that citation can take, and it’s the courts, not APD, that manage the payment of the tickets. In contrast, speeding in an automated speed enforcement zone only results in a $100 fine (that can be substituted with community service).

When APD issues a traffic citation, they can give a warning citation, which doesn’t require a fee to be paid. If the party admits they’re guilty of the infraction, they can be given a penalty assessment citation, which means they will automatically be required to pay a fine without having to appear in court.

Traffic arraignment and court appearance citations require a court date.

Of the 74,000 citations issued, about half were traffic arraignment citations, requiring an appearance in metropolitan or municipal court. Approximately 19,000 were warning citations and didn’t require a fee to be paid.

About 6,000 were court appearance citations and 2,321 were straightforward penalty assessment citations.

DON’T BE SALTY: Good enough to eat.

That’s what street maintenance staff says about the city of Albuquerque’s road salt, which is sourced from salt mines in Utah and New Mexico. But it’s not recommended to lick the roads — the final product is mixed with cinder, rendering it inedible .

Debuting a brand-new truck, city staff had its first practice dumping road salt in preparation for what Department of Municipal Development Director Pat Montoya predicted would be a wet winter.

The city uses two types of salt: regular road salt and what’s known as the “ice slicer,” which is specifically designed for extreme cold weather.

Montoya said the city manages roughly 4,400 lane miles per year, making it “almost impossible” to cover the entire area of Albuquerque.

The department only does ice and snow removal on major arterial and collector roads, Montoya said, unless the weather is especially bad, in which case they will try to reach smaller streets as well.

“I want to remind the residents we do not do residential streets because of the manpower,” Montoya said.

Last year, the city spent approximately $200,000 on cinder and road salt.