Red Light Cameras No Longer Greenlighted in L.A.

It's seems like a no-brainer: install automatic cameras in intersections to catch drivers who run red lights in the act, then generate photographic evidence that's mailed to offenders along with the bill. Ka-ching! Revenues that strapped cities desperately need, plus technology that catches all those violators who try to make the yellow! Except that the system has turned out to be an epic fail.

Guilty but not paying up
Los Angeles just discontinued its red light program. This is from the LA Times:

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-0 to kill the program after disclosures that paying fines for camera-issued tickets is considered "voluntary" by city officials. That outraged some motorists who have paid their tickets.

In Beverly Hills, where the red-light camera program has been in place since 1996, Lt. Mark Rosen of the traffic bureau said the city is also looking at expanding the operation.

The program brings in gross revenues of more than $150,000 a month -â€" of which $53,000 goes to the vendor--and red-light violations have declined at the intersections where it has been put in place, he said....

Rosen said Beverly Hills has had a high success rate by pursuing offenders through collections, but that he would prefer to see the courts notify the DMV when defendants fail to appear on red-light tickets.

• A 25 percent decrease in total right-angle crashes
• A 16 percent decrease in injury right-angle crashes
• A 15 percent increase in total rear-end crashes
• A 24 percent increase in injury rear-end crashes

The business of catching red light runners
The contractor who oversees Beverly Hills' red light cameras might be raking in more than a third of the revenue, but evidently that wasn't matched in L.A. And there were some other issues, unrelated to traffic. According to the New York Times:

In 2010, the council voted to boycott commerce with Arizona-based businesses and governments in a principled stand against that state's immigration laws. However, when it was noted that American Traffic Solutions, the operator of the city's red-light camera system, was based in Scottsdale, an exemption was given.

Critics accused the council of hypocrisy, in that the American Traffic Solutions contract was spared from the boycott only because it was believed to be generating income for the city. However, a city audit of 2010 departmental budgets found the program was failing to generate the projected levels of income. In fact, amid a budget crisis, the city was found to be pumping more than $1 million into the program to keep it solvent.

Except when it doesn't, as in L.A.'s case. Then it doesn't matter if the threat of getting busted somehow makes the intersection safer. Technology can't collect fines. The courts need to be on board for that.

This problem isn't limited to running red lights. Transportation technology providers are keen to enter other state and local markets, devising ways for cities to reduce traffic by metering roads and controlling congestion by restricting access to urban centers. On balance, the technology works fine. It's not even such a bad thing to think of it as a necessary boondoggle, given how bad city finances are these day.

But if you can't collect the fines, the technology is just an elegant waste -- a doomed solution to a problem that will have to be dealt with the old-fashioned way: by hiring cops and paying them to catch people who break the law.

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