An analysis conducted for the Arizona DOT (AzDOT) published in 2008 provided an estimate of the cost of a statewide automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) system. ALPR uses cameras and alphanumeric recognition software for reading license plates as vehicles pass by.

The cost estimate assumes that the cost of each camera is $20,000; a cost which was obtained from private ALPR manufacturers. Because the camera cost does not include the cost of installation or associated hardware including fiber optics, air cards, etc., 20 percent is added to the camera costs. The estimate assumes that one camera will be installed for each lane of traffic at a camera site. For example, a 10 lane highway would have 10 cameras.

The following equation defines the estimated cost of the ALPR system.

($20,000 * C) * 1.2 = Total Cost of an ALPR system

• $20,000 = the cost of one ALPR camera
• C = the number of cameras (with one camera per lane at each camera site)
• 1.2 = the 20% estimated "soft" costs such as installation and fiber optics

The total cost for an ALPR system consisting of 55 camera sites and 416 cameras is $9,984,000.