Los Angeles is about to start mailing speeding tickets to drivers who never saw a cop. Up to 125 automated speed cameras are coming to city streets — including on Melrose, Fairfax, and Highland, right outside West Hollywood’s borders. Outside. Not in.
If you’re wondering why, it’s the law.
Why WeHo is out
The cameras come from AB 645, signed by Gavin Newsom in 2023. The law named six cities that could run speed camera programs: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. West Hollywood, an independent city, surrounded by LA but not part of it, didn’t make the list. Getting added would actually take new legislation.
Where the cameras land near you
Four locations on WeHo’s doorstep worth knowing about:
- Melrose Avenue between N. Hayworth and N. Orange Grove — Fairfax District, just east of the city line
- N. Fairfax Avenue between Clinton and Waring — Beverly Grove
- Hollywood Boulevard between N. Vista and Camino Palmero — Hollywood
- N. Highland Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard — Hollywood
The Melrose stretch is as close to West Hollywood as you get without crossing into it. If you live or shop nearby you’ll be under the watchful eye.
What’s the plan
Installation and testing will run April through July. Then a 60-day warning period where notices go out, but no fines. Enforcement starts after that:
- 11-15 mph over: warning first offense, $50 after that
- 16-25 mph over: $100
- 26-99 mph over: $200
- 100+ mph over: $500
Cameras will capture front and rear license plates only, no windshield images, no facial recognition, no people. Data stays with LADOT and doesn’t get shared with other agencies. Cops aren’t involved. Whatever revenue the program generates goes back into traffic safety, by law.
So what does WeHo have?
Not much in the way of automated enforcement. West Hollywood ran red light cameras for years, upgraded digital equipment at four intersections as recently as 2017. That program is finished. The city is now among the California municipalities that ended their red light camera enforcement. The two technologies aren’t connected anyway. Speed cameras operate under a separate legal framework. Ending one has nothing to do with the other.
The City’s main tool right now is its Neighborhood Traffic Management Program. This is where you can petition for things like speed humps, curb extensions, or turn restrictions. It works, but slowly, and only if residents push for it.
It’s not news that debate is live and hot on the streets of WeHo. The infamous Fountain Avenue protected bike lane approval last September is one example. Skeptics on the council and in the surrounding neighborhood said a bike lane doesn’t make cars go slower. They weren’t wrong — the council agreed enough to direct Staff to also adjust signal timing on the street: longer pedestrian crossing intervals, more frequent red light cycles. That’s literally happening right now. The City is swapping out traffic signal controller cabinets at seven Fountain intersections through April 10, the hardware that actually controls how long lights stay green and how intersections coordinate with each other. On Fairfax, residents are making the same case: the street doesn’t need a redesign, it needs something that actually changes driver behavior.
Speed cameras would fix exactly that. Word is West Hollywood wants them, they just can’t have them yet. The City could pursue red light cameras without Sacramento’s help. Unlike speed cameras, those don’t require special state authorization. Any California city can run a program under California Vehicle Code Section 21455.5. In an email chain shared with WEHOonline this week, a resident made exactly that point, citing the July 2025 death of Blake Ackerman near Gardner and Fountain, and a petition that followed.
The same email chain produced an important update from City Hall: West Hollywood has been actively lobbying Sacramento for years to be added to the speed camera pilot. The message back is that legislators want data from the existing pilot cities before expanding the program to additional ones.
So the City is already pushing for speed cameras. Sacramento isn’t ready. And a red light camera at one of Fountain’s most dangerous intersections, something West Hollywood could approve on its own, remains an open question.
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Don’t worry, we don’t need speed cameras we’re gonna have a bike lane on fountain to keep us all going 5 miles an hour.
I rarely reply to comments… this one deserved a hearty lol
Thank you for the update Brian! Good to know!
It’s a real shame that Rick Zbur can’t get West Hollywood added to the list of cities. Senator Ben Allen was able to add Malibu to the list the next session via SB 1297 but Zbur won’t even try to add WeHo.
Whatever sort of camera control the residents of West Hollywood may want, John Erickson and Chelsea Byers will object because there will always be some outside chance ICE might get their hands on the information and somehow that will aid them in locating undocumented people.
It’s a shame every election cycle you (the collective voting demos) find a Zbur on the ballot and vote for them – or an Erickson, or Shyne, Horvath, etc.
It’s on you – to keep doing the same thing over and over in the face of the evidence is madness and despite the ‘no kings’ energy on here, we need some kind of (hopefully benevolent) despot to fix the malaise – a Singapore style government would go a long way to correcting the mess.
Requesting speed controls doesn’t mean you’ll get them. N. Kings Rd. between Santa Monica and Fountain has done that several times. The only thing that’s been put in are little islands that don’t do anything to slow down traffic. Even someone getting hit wasn’t enough.