Fort Collins Police Services is asking the Fort Collins City Council to retain the city’s 21 automated speed-enforcement corridors while approving a series of changes that would expand how camera systems can be used and lower the threshold for issuing speeding citations.
Council is scheduled to discuss the Automated Vehicle Identification System, or AVIS, during its Nov. 10 work session. Police will present crash and citation data collected under the city’s existing speed-corridor program and ask council members whether they support changes intended to bring the municipal code into alignment with state law.
Among the most immediate proposed changes is lowering the city’s standard automated-enforcement threshold from 11 mph over the posted speed limit to 10 mph over. Colorado’s AVIS statute permits citations beginning at 10 mph over the limit, and police say neighboring jurisdictions already use that threshold. Fort Collins currently begins issuing citations at 11 mph over.
The recommended change means a driver recorded traveling 45 mph in a 35 mph zone could become eligible for a camera-issued citation. Under the city’s current threshold, enforcement would begin at 46 mph.
Police propose broader camera authority
Police are also seeking authority to issue AVIS citations beginning at 6 mph over the limit in school and construction zones. The agenda summary describes the proposed threshold as 6 to 9 mph over the posted limit in those designated areas.
Other proposed changes include:
- Eliminating the driver-photograph requirement. Citations would be issued to a vehicle’s registered owner rather than requiring an identifiable photograph of the person driving. Exceptions would apply when a vehicle had been sold or stolen, or when the registered owner was deceased.
- Using AVIS for speeds of 25 mph or more above the limit. Police said those cases currently require an officer to research the registered owner and contact the driver. Under the proposal, the violation could become a civil penalty mailed to the registered owner, who could pay or contest it.
- Adding authority for school-bus stop-arm enforcement. State law now permits that use of AVIS, although does not currently use the technology for school-bus violations.
- Creating a citywide financial steering committee. The multidisciplinary committee would oversee how money generated by the AVIS program is directed toward traffic-safety work. The proposal is supported by .
- Ending mandatory biennial reports to council. Instead of returning every two years, police would report when the department recommends changing a speed-corridor designation.
The current reporting requirement was established under Ordinance No. 098, 2024. It calls for five years of quantitative data involving crashes, speeding violations and reckless driving on streets designated as AVIS corridors.
Overall crashes fell, but two intersections recorded increases
Police analyzed crashes at six intersections equipped with fixed red-light and radar cameras. The comparison covers roughly 18½ months before speed-camera citations began, from May 27, 2023, through Dec. 12, 2024, and about 18½ months afterward, from Dec. 13, 2024, through July 1, 2026.
Across the six intersections, reported crashes declined from 184 before speed enforcement to 169 afterward, an overall reduction of 8.2%.
The results varied considerably by location:
- Shields Street and Mulberry Street: Crashes fell from 24 to 15, a 37.5% decrease.
- Shields Street and Prospect Road: Crashes fell from 33 to 25, a 24.2% decrease.
- Lemay Avenue and Drake Road: Crashes fell from 32 to 25, a 21.9% decrease.
- Timberline Road and Harmony Road: Crashes fell from 41 to 36, a 12.2% decrease.
- College Avenue and Drake Road: Crashes increased from 40 to 52, a 30% increase.
- Shields Street and Harmony Road: Crashes increased from 14 to 16, a 14.3% increase.
The city’s presentation does not establish that camera enforcement caused either the increases or decreases. It presents a before-and-after count rather than a controlled safety study, and the material does not separate crashes by severity or specify whether changes in traffic volume influenced the results.
Speed vans issued more than 68,000 corridor tickets
The city’s data show substantial variation in camera-ticket volume among the designated corridors.
Speed vans issued 53,583 tickets in Tier One corridors from January 2021 through Sept. 30, 2026. Tier Two corridors accounted for another 14,755 tickets, bringing the combined total shown in the presentation to 68,338.
In Tier One, three corridors accounted for more than half of the speed-van citations:
- Prospect Road, from Taft Hill Road to Interstate 25: 10,283 tickets.
- Lemay Avenue, from Prospect Road to Trilby Road: 10,140 tickets.
- College Avenue, from Laurel Street to Carpenter Road: 6,886 tickets.
Together, those three corridors generated 27,309 tickets, approximately 51% of the Tier One total.
Other high-volume Tier One locations included Shields Street between Elizabeth Street and Carpenter Road, with 5,116 tickets; Riverside Drive between College Avenue and Pitkin Street, with 5,083; Taft Hill Road between Mulberry Street and Trilby Road, with 4,358; and Ziegler Road, with 4,075.
The presentation reports no speed-van tickets for two Tier One corridors: Trilby Road between Wainwright Drive and College Avenue, and Timberline Road between Prospect and Drake roads. The documents do not explain whether the zero totals resulted from an absence of enforcement, no recorded violations or another operational reason.
Officers issued 8,631 Tier One speeding and reckless-driving tickets
Separate from automated enforcement, officers issued 8,631 speeding and reckless-driving tickets in Tier One corridors during the five-year period from Oct. 1, 2021, through Sept. 30, 2026. Of those, 8,551 were speeding tickets and 80 were reckless-driving tickets.
College Avenue between Laurel Street and Carpenter Road recorded the largest number of officer-issued citations, with 1,397 total tickets, including 1,369 for speeding and 28 for reckless driving. Shields Street between Elizabeth Street and Carpenter Road followed with 1,309 tickets, including 1,302 speeding citations and seven reckless-driving citations.
Prospect Road between Taft Hill Road and Interstate 25 recorded 1,142 officer-issued tickets, and the Ziegler Road corridor recorded 1,019. Riverside Drive had 768, Horsetooth Road had 666, Drake Road between Overland Trail and Lemay Avenue had 658, and Taft Hill Road had 649.
At the lower end, Lemay Avenue between Prospect and Trilby roads recorded 46 officer-issued tickets despite having the second-highest Tier One speed-van total. Suniga Road recorded 51 officer-issued tickets, while Timberline Road between Prospect and Drake roads recorded 67.
The figures suggest automated and officer-led enforcement have not been distributed identically. For example, the Lemay Avenue corridor produced 10,140 speed-van tickets but only 46 officer-issued citations during the periods presented. The documents do not state how frequently officers or vans were deployed in each corridor, making direct comparisons between roadways difficult.
Police recommend keeping all 21 corridors
Based on the crash and citation data, Fort Collins Police Services recommends retaining all 21 existing speed corridors without changing their boundaries. The corridors were established in 2024 as part of the city’s Vision Zero effort to eliminate fatal and serious-injury crashes.
Council members are being asked for direction on two questions: whether to continue the existing corridor designations and whether to move forward with municipal-code changes aligning the local system with Colorado’s updated AVIS law.
The Nov. 10 meeting is a work session, so council is expected to provide direction rather than take final legislative action. According to the agenda summary, the next step would be bringing the proposed code updates forward for approval.
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