I totally agree that photo enforcement is a cash grab. Plus there's nothing like the feeling of getting a photo of your stolen car in the mail with a ticket. I feel that it's very telling what the police know about the deterrent effect when they say that they're going to expand the number of photo vehicles out there by 50%, and will therefore budget a 50% increase in fine revenues from them. It tells me that they are expecting the number of infractions to remain exactly the same, but they'll just catch and fine more people.
For the layout, Edmonton is pretty much a grid pattern, so you find a major road that's going in the general compass direction that you want to get to, and follow it until you need to be going in a different compass direction. There are certainly exceptions (And I'll include pretty much the whole of the southeast corner of the city) but that's more or less it. By contrast, the trail system in Calgary takes some getting used to, so I basically take it as it's different, and people used to one have to get used to adjusting to the other.
For speed limits, there's a freeway in Edmonton notorious for nasty accidents. The speed limit is 80km/h (~50mph), and even the AMA (Motor Association) says it should be higher. I maintain that while a slower speed does give you time to react, it's a speed differential on the road that gives you more to react to. There are numerous studies which point to drivers ignoring speed limits if they feel that they're unreasonable, so you get a road like this, with a bridge on it that is famous for accidents. The speed limit is 80, but because of the accident rate, and because the bridge is known slippery in winter, there are many people going 60 km/h. At the same time, there are also people going at 100 to 120 km/h. The result is perfectly predictable. Those who want to go 60 obviously say that it's those driving "unreasonably fast" who are to blame for the accidents, but I feel that if people were all going 100 to 120, the accident rate would be much much lower, as well as the injury rate. (Though it would be lower still if everyone did the lower speed instead.) The city just spent a bundle on widening the bridge in hopes of alleviating the problem, but my bet for this winter is that the accident rate won't be as low as they're hoping, because the speed limit hasn't changed. Some people will still slow to 60 on snowy days (Likely to continue for the next 5 months at least) and now even more people will completely ignore the posted limit because of the wider bridge. You'll have that same dangerous mix of people going 60 and people going 100-120, and there will still be accidents.