It’s unfortunate that Mayor Catherine Pugh’s announcement that Baltimore will revive its speed and red light camera system came in the context of submitting her budget proposal. She expects the program will generate about $8 million in revenue in the next fiscal year, and that money is important in fulfilling a variety of priorities, including more money for the school system, a small property tax cut for homeowners, funding to fulfill the terms of the Department of Justice’s settlement over police practices and the establishment of a new youth fund. But considering the debacle of Baltimore’s old speed camera system, which grew out of control in what appeared clearly to be a prioritization of revenue (both for the city and the camera vendor) over safety, it could leave a bad impression in city residents’ minds.

Ms. Pugh apparently realized the fault in her messaging because shortly after her announcement, she issued a clarification laying out parameters for the new program that address many of the failings of the old one. In part, the changes follow recommendations of a city task force convened after a Sun investigation revealed flaws in the old program, and in part they follow state laws passed in response to its problems. But overall, the changes reflect a wiser and more modest approach to what should, first and foremost, be a program to improve public safety. Not only is she planning a much smaller and more manageable system, she is promising a more robust set of controls on the issuance of tickets and more transparency about the program’s design and operation.

Those reforms are clearly necessary. As The Sun’s investigation documented, and as subsequent probes by the city’s Inspector General and City Council confirmed, the old system was prone to error at rates vastly higher than the city or camera vendor let on. In one particularly memorable failure, the paper found a case of a car ticketed for speeding while it was stopped at a red light. Creating a new system worthy of the public’s trust will be difficult, given the history, but Ms. Pugh is taking some pains to do so.

Before it was shut down under former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s administration, Baltimore ran the largest red-light and speed camera program in North America. The city had 155 speed cameras and 81 red-light cameras then; the program generated $19 million a year before it was shut down. Ms. Pugh is proposing 10 fixed speed cameras, 10 portable speed cameras, 10 red-light cameras and six cameras designed to detect commercial trucks driving on streets where they are prohibited. The previous program grew massively in scale without increasing staffing and oversight. This one will include the addition of new staff at the Department of Transportation and the creation of an ombudsman who can handle ticket appeals.

Perhaps most crucially, the new program ends what amounted to a bounty system for the speed camera vendor. Because the vendor received a per-ticket fee, it had an incentive to see more violations, and because it also played a key role in the process of issuing them, it had the ability to foster its own interest. The legislature had intended to prohibit such arrangements when it initially authorized speed cameras, and tightening the rules was a major focus of the General Assembly’s 2014 reforms. Ms. Pugh says the city will pay the vendor a flat fee per camera per month, regardless of how many tickets are issued. Also in accordance with the new law, the city plans to assess penalties including fines or even the termination of an operator’s contract for inaccurate citations. The Rawlings-Blake administration actually paid off the old vendor to the tune of $600,000 — plus $2.2 million to buy the cameras themselves, which will now never be used.

Finally, the law now requires and Ms. Pugh is promising greater transparency about the locations of the cameras and their efficacy in reducing speeds and improving public safety.

Ms. Pugh appears to be on the right path, but we offer two caveats. First, Baltimore should not rush to get the new system in operation. Ms. Pugh says they could be online as soon as June, but considering that the city is still reviewing proposals, that seems overly ambitious. We should not let any desire to see them produce revenue in the next fiscal year short-circuit thorough review of the proposed contract. And second, the City Council needs to exercise diligent oversight of this program from the start. It should hold regular hearings on the cameras’ impact on public safety and their error rates and give the public the opportunity to voice any complaints about them.

Other jurisdictions have run successful and reliable red light and speed camera programs for years, and there is no reason Baltimore can’t do so as well — provided it keeps the focus where it needs to be, on improving public safety, not on improving the city’s bottom line.