Four Speed Camera Programs Reach L.A. County. The Fine Schedule Runs $50 to $500.

You are wondering what the first one costs. If it arrives during a camera's opening 60 days, nothing — both of the state laws putting speed cameras on Los Angeles County roads require every site to run a 60-day warning period before it bills anyone. After that window closes, a first violation at 11 to 15 miles per hour over the limit is still a warning notice rather than a bill; that sentence is written into both statutes. Everything else is a bill, and the bills start at $50.

There are four separate programs, running on two separate statutes and four separate calendars, and they are close enough together this autumn that they will be discussed as one thing. They are not one thing. Here is each clock, traced to the agency or the section of law that sets it.

The four programs

City of Los Angeles — 125 locations. The City Council adopted the final location maps on March 24, and LAist reported the cameras will be mounted on streetlight poles and spread across council districts, with one amendment moving District 1's installation from Venice Boulevard to Figueroa Street. The program is run by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation rather than by police, and Fox 11 reported an installation window of April through July, a 60-day public awareness campaign over the summer, a 60-day warning period in late summer or fall, and citations beginning late in the year. LADOT told Streetsblog Los Angeles in March that the next step was executing the contract, subject to approval by the City Attorney, the Council and the Mayor. The same story names the vendor as Verra, which also holds the contracts in San Francisco, Oakland, Glendale and Long Beach.

Long Beach — 18 cameras, and the only firm dates on the board. Fox 11 reported on August 4 that the warning period begins October 4 and civil citations begin December 3, both dates carrying the city's "or earlier" hedge. The Public Works Department runs it. Long Beach's site selection is the most legible of the four: the Long Beach Post reported that a location had to sit on a federally designated safety corridor, be a school zone, or have drawn four enforcement calls in two years, and that most of the 18 are in or near school zones — three of them on Long Beach Boulevard. The same reporting priced the pilot at about $835,000 in year one and roughly $1.6 million a year to run, and noted that a city survey taken in October and November 2025 found 48 percent opposed and 41 percent in support.

Glendale — up to nine. The number is not a plan, it is a ceiling written into the statute: Assembly Bill 645 caps a participating city under 300,000 people at nine systems, which is also Long Beach's cap. Glendale's own activation date is the one item on this page we could not pin to a source we could read; its public-works page was unreachable from here when we checked.

Malibu — five systems, ten cameras, and a different law entirely. Malibu is not an AB 645 city. It has its own statute, Senate Bill 1297, authored by Senator Ben Allen and signed in September 2024, which authorizes up to five speed safety systems on the city's 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway. The city's program page names the five: Decker Canyon; between Guernsey Avenue and Morning View; Latigo Canyon; between Carbon Beach Terrace and Carbon Canyon; and Tuna Canyon. The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that public education began August 18, that the 60-day warning period is expected to start in late September, and that penalties are expected from late November. The same story put the case for the cameras in numbers from the Sheriff's Department and the city: more than 60 deaths on that stretch since 2010, and 220 crashes in 2023 producing 93 injuries and seven deaths.

One detail from Malibu's file is worth keeping, because it is the sort of thing that decides whether a program stays honest. On May 5, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported that the council sent the $14 million vendor contract back to staff after the interim city attorney flagged a fee provision — $35,000 for each additional block of 5,000 reviewed events past 20,000 a month — as a possible conflict with the Vehicle Code's ban on paying a vendor by the violation. Council Member Doug Stewart, quoted in that story: "If we don't get one dime worth of revenue out of this, it is a success."

What a notice costs

Both statutes carry the identical schedule, so the number does not depend on which city mailed the envelope. It depends on one thing, which is how far over you were:

• $50 — 11 to 15 mph over the posted limit.
• $100 — 16 to 25 mph over.
• $200 — 26 mph or more over.
• $500 — 100 mph or more.

Nothing under 11 mph over the limit triggers anything at all. That is the threshold written into both bills, and it is the reason the cameras are described everywhere as catching speeding rather than catching speed.

Two things a moving violation would do to you, these do not. AB 645 says a violation "shall not result in the department suspending or revoking the privilege of a violator to drive a motor vehicle or in a violation point being assessed" — no points, and therefore nothing for an insurer to price. Long Beach states the same on its own behalf, per Fox 11: civil fines only, not reported to insurance companies, and no citation data shared with the police department or other enforcement agencies.

If the fine is the problem

This is the part of the law that goes unmentioned in most coverage, and it is written in percentages rather than in discretion. Both bills direct the city to reduce the fine by 80 percent for a person who is indigent, and by 50 percent for a person with income up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level. A person who is indigent may perform community service instead of paying. AB 645 also caps an installment plan at $25 a month with a processing fee of no more than $5.

Los Angeles has said it will run its reductions through an existing channel. LAist reported that the city plans to expand its Community Assistance Parking program so that low-income drivers and people who are unhoused can do community service in place of payment.

The three clocks, if you want to fight it

The review process is the same under both statutes, it is administrative rather than judicial at the first two steps, and every deadline runs from a mailing date rather than from the day the envelope reached you.

Initial review — 30 calendar days from the date the notice was mailed. This is the free step and the one most people will need.

Administrative hearing — 21 calendar days from the mailing of the initial-review result.

The hearing itself — within 90 calendar days of the request.

Those are longer than the equivalents on a parking ticket, where the first window is 21 days rather than 30. If you have been through that process, the muscle memory is wrong here in your favor — but only at the first step. The parking clocks are here, and they are a different set of sections in a different article of the code.

What the camera is allowed to see

The statutes are narrow about the equipment, and the narrowness is enforceable. Under AB 645, "the use of facial recognition technology in conjunction with a speed safety system shall be prohibited," and what a program collects may be used only to run that program. Everyone else is shut out, including any other state or federal agency, and the section lists the only openings: "for any other purpose, except as required by state or federal law, court order, or in response to a subpoena in an individual case or proceeding." Photographs from an event that produces no violation are destroyed within five business days. Records tied to a violation are kept no longer than 60 days after final disposition. The cameras photograph the rear plate, not the windshield, which is why the notice is addressed to the registered owner rather than to whoever was behind the wheel.

Malibu's system, per the city's page, uses lidar alongside the cameras and records only when a violation is detected.

The sign is a legal requirement, not a courtesy

Both bills require a sign reading "Photo Enforced" posted no more than 500 feet before the system, displaying the posted speed limit and visible to approaching traffic. SB 1297 adds flashing beacons and speed-feedback signs to Malibu's stretch. AB 645 also requires at least 30 calendar days of public notice before a program starts — announcements in major media outlets and press releases naming when enforcement begins and where the systems are.

The money is fenced too, and here the two laws part company: the provisions in this paragraph are AB 645's, so they bind Los Angeles, Long Beach and Glendale rather than Malibu. Revenue must first cover the program's own costs, and anything left over has to go to traffic-calming work within three years or revert to the state's Active Transportation Program. Before a camera goes up, the city has to adopt a Speed Safety System Impact Report, and that report has to include a racial equity analysis — violations broken out by ZIP code and income level — and, where cameras land in low-income neighborhoods, a written explanation of why those locations carry high fatality rates.

What the one working program has produced

San Francisco is the only California city whose cameras have been running long enough to produce a record, and it is the closest thing to a forecast anyone in Los Angeles has. Patch reported that 33 cameras issued more than 400,000 warning notices between March and August 2025 before citations began on August 5 — and that 70 percent of the drivers who got a warning did not get a second one. Average daily speeding events fell about 30 percent between the first week and the seventh after activation, with drops of 40 to 63 percent on the highest-volume corridors.

Four hundred thousand warnings from 33 cameras in six months is the number to hold next to Los Angeles's 125.

What is still unsettled

Three things on this page are forecasts rather than facts, and they are labeled that way for a reason.

Los Angeles has no published go-live date we could verify. The reporting from March gave a window — late summer or fall for the warning period, late 2026 for citations — and LADOT's own program page was unreachable from here when we checked on August 26. Until the department posts a date, the honest version is a window.

Malibu's dates are the city's expectations, stated as "late September" and "late November," not as calendar dates. Long Beach's October 4 and December 3 are the firmest on the board and still carry an "or earlier."

And Glendale, which is authorized for as many as nine systems, is a blank on this page. If you drive there, watch for the signs, because the sign is the notice the law actually requires.

Fine amounts, thresholds, reduction percentages, review deadlines, signage rules, data-retention limits and revenue restrictions above were read on August 26, 2026 from the text of Assembly Bill 645 and Senate Bill 1297 on the California Legislature's own site. Program dates, camera counts and locations were taken from the City of Malibu's program page and from reporting by LAist, Fox 11, Streetsblog Los Angeles, the Long Beach Post, the Santa Monica Daily Press and Patch, each credited and linked where it is used. The linked sources win over this page, which is re-verified and updated in place at this address.