Appealed I-380 Cedar Rapids speed cameras to resume enforcement Jan. 1

Two Cedar Rapids speed enforcement cameras that the Iowa Department of Transportation approved for use in October — after a successful appeal by the Cedar Rapids Police Department to the DOT’s initial rejection of the cameras last year — will begin enforcement operations again on Jan. 1.

The cameras will be in operation starting Dec. 2, but will only issue warnings until the official enforcement begins in January, according to a news release from the police department.

The Cedar Rapids Police Department will now return to having four operating speed cameras on the I-380 S-curve — one at each entrance to the curve and one at each exit. Only the two at each entrance to the S-curve were initially approved last year, when the police department applied for DOT approval under a new law. At the time, the city had 13 operating speed enforcement cameras.

The denial of the I-380 cameras, and most of the other speed enforcement cameras that were previously used in the city, was issued in September 2024. The city of Cedar Rapids submitted an appeal for the two cameras on I-380 in October 2024, and the denial was upheld in a decision issued by the DOT in May. The city then requested a contested case hearing, which was held in September, and the decision was reversed at the end of October, according to the release from the police department.

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“The City’s use of ATE systems is designed to enhance public safety and has consistently proven effective in improving driver behavior by reducing the number of speeding vehicles and decreasing the severity of crashes in areas with critical traffic safety concerns where traditional traffic enforcement can pose added risks to first responders and the motoring public,” the release states.

Two other cameras — one each facing northbound and southbound on Williams Boulevard at 16th Ave SW — were approved last year for speed enforcement in Cedar Rapids. The other seven, at other intersections throughout the city, have continued to be used for red light enforcement but are no longer issuing speeding citations.

The cameras are used to issue speeding citations to the registered owners of vehicles detected driving 11 mph or more over the speed limit. Before June of 2024, citations were issued when a car was driving 12 mph or more over the limit. The citations are not reported to the state and do not affect a driver’s record or insurance rates.

In Fiscal Year 2025 — which ran from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025 — $7.2 million of the public safety budget for the City of Cedar Rapids came from the traffic cameras. In Fiscal Year 2026, which will end July 1, 2026, only $4.4 million of the budget is coming from the cameras, according to the police department release. The department did not answer Monday whether those numbers came from actual money collected by the cameras or an estimate of how much would be collected in the fiscal year.

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Citation data

The police department also released annual data Monday showing the citations issued by all of its automated traffic enforcement cameras in 2024 and through the end of October 2025.

Despite the loss of the two speed enforcement cameras on I-380, the total number of speed citations issued through the cameras on the interstate has not decreased by much.

In 2024, there were 122,984 traffic citations issued through the four cameras — 81,699 by the two cameras that were approved, and 41,285 by the two cameras that were turned off at the end of September. In the first 10 months of 2025, the two remaining cameras have already issued 108,429 speeding citations.

The camera at the northbound entrance to the S-curve issued significantly more citations this year — jumping from 24,588 in 2024 to 78,754 in the first 10 months of 2025. The camera at the southbound entrance to the S-curve has issued fewer citations — dropping from 57,111 in 2024 to 29,675 in the first 10 months of 2025.

The two other Cedar Rapids cameras that were approved for speed enforcement last year, at the intersection of Williams Boulevard and 16th Avenue, also saw an increase in speeding citations this year, jumping from 9,871 in 2024 to 11,499 in the first 10 months of 2025.

Red light citations issued by those two cameras and the seven others that were rejected for speed enforcement — two at First Avenue and 10th Street, two at First Avenue and L Street, two at Edgewood Road and 42nd Street, and one at Center Point Road and the Collins Road ramp — didn’t see significant change between 2024 and 2025. There were a total of 4,978 red light citations from cameras in the city in 2024, and 4,520 in the first 10 months of 2025.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com