Chicago's red light cameras: cash cow or safety fix?
In Chicago there are things that people complain about regularly including the weather, the politicians and our never winning always losing sports teams.
Add red-light cameras to the list!
But no matter how much people complain about them, or how much they may not be liked, according to a recent Chicago Sun-Times analysis, they do seem to be doing their job.
The Sun-Times too a look at data available on all of the 140 red-light cameras in Chicago. It appears that the number of tickets issued at red-light camera intersections has seen a dramatic decrease. Since 2005, the number of violations has dropped over 70%.
From November 2004 to April 2005, tickets issued at the interection of Peterson and Western number 217 monthly. This is down from 1,015 monthly violations. Overall, the average number of violations issued at red-light camera intersections in Chicago, had decreased from 1,334 to 481.
The most recently installed cameras catch the most drivers. At the intersection of Stony Island and 76th street which had a camera installed in December, 2,763 violations were issued.
There has also been a drop in traffic accidents at these intersections. The city reports that they have seen a decrease of up to 20%.
Joe Schieterman, a DePaul University transportation expert believes that the cameras do make the intersections more safe, but believes the $100 fine is too steep. "There are still difficult questions about whether they're a license to print money."
According to the latest data, the red light cameras generated $122 million in revenue for the city.
The city has a 5 year agreement with Redflex Traffic Systems who manage and service the carmers. The cost of the agreement is $32 million. Violations would have to stay above an average of 39 amonth in order for the cameras to be considered cost effective.
However, the intersection with the fewest offenders still netted 85 violations.
Some drivers believe the cameras place them at an unfair advantage. Joseph Schofer a professor of civil and envrionmental engineering at Northwestern University says that with the red-light cameras, the odds of getting caught go from 1% to 95% but believes that using the cameras to keep drivers from running red lights is reasonable.
Tom Vanderbilt, author of the book Traffic believes that the red-light cameras can reduce the amount of money the city ultimately spends. If the cameras reduce the amount of severe crashes, which we all pay for, the cost to taxpayers goes down.
