Red Light Camera Tickets, Revenue Plunges In Plainfield
Something fishy is going on.
Plainfield’s red light camera program is less than three years old.
But that western suburb’s red light cameras seem to be having some sort of effect at the two RLC intersection.
According to the Joliet Herald News, red light camera violations and revenue have been falling since the cameras were first installed in 2010.
The city issued 3,573 violations and brought in $8100 in 2010. 2,953 violations were issued in 2011 and only 1,200 RLC tickets have gone out the first seven months of the year with barely $2000 in revenue realized.
The reduction in red light running at those locations is a positive thing and one can debate whether how much of the decline is due to RLCs or not.
What is perhaps the most interesting revelation from the data, and completely missed by the story’s author is the disconnect between the number of violations and the revenue Plainfield brought in.
If 3,573 tickets were issued in 2010, that should have translated to $357,300 in gross fines based on a standard $100 ticket. Of course, not everyone pays their tickets but often late fees will make up for those who decide not to pay.
But $8000 is just a hair over 2% of the total fines issued.
But what is most likely happening in Plainfield is that the red light camera vendor is taking the lion’s share of the revenue. Unlike Chicago which owns their RLC hardware outright, most towns get their red light cameras for free but then sign a revenue sharing contract which often favors the vendor in a lopsided way when it comes to bottom line revenue.
Either Plainfield is doing a really crappy job collecting on outstanding RLC fines and/or they signed a one-sided contract that is making American Traffic Solutions a lot of money.
Here’s the Joliet Herald News story, “Plainfield sees drop in red-light camera fines.”
It would be nice if the paper got a hold of the violation breakdown.
Most RLC tickets tend to be right turns on red, stop line and split seconds.
So what is the breakdown???
(another ATS town showed that most “violations’ were slow right turns on red. http://www.banthecams.org/Studies-Show/ats-mukilteo-survey-proves-most-of-the-qviolationsq-were-right-turns.html
You could go from here to the planet Jupiter before getting in a wreck making a right turn on red. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2693.asp
Most RLV crashes are plus 5 second into red events..)
I bring this up since towns have been known to “adjust” the violations they cite. One game played by ATS was the “rejection” rate in Baytown TX. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/31/3173.asp Quote: “Statistics show that, in response, city officials and American Traffic Solutions have deliberately issued fewer citations. The program rejected 29 percent of violations in July 2008, but documents show the rate of rejections climbed to 54 percent in December.”
This is exactly why I will fight to keep red light cameras out of my city. A company comes in and makes deals with the politicians to put cameras up, and the city only gets a taste while most of the money gets sucked directly out of your community. Terrible.
Geek…someone in the Plainfield City Council has to have gotten a serious Kickback to ignore Contract Language that remits just under 98% of generated Fine Revenue back to the company that installed/maintains the Cameras.
120,000.00 in generated Revenue in 2012 so far with only 2,000.00 paid to the city YTD? That’s a Joke.
Even Chicago City Contracts are not that Lopsided.
JP,
If these revenue numbers are correct and the assumptions I make are correct, Plainfield’s RLC program is nothing but a lucrative revenue generator for the vendor.
To my mind, at worst, the revenue generated for a town through RLC enforcement should be split 50/50 with the vendor. Then, the city side of the revenue should be used strictly to improve traffic safety whether that is in the form of education or re-engineering intersections or improving traffic lights, etc.
Plainfield’s situation seems unhealthily one sided to me.
Comments Steve. The mayor of Plainfield and the city Council should hang their heads in shame for signing an agreement with the camera vendor it gives them nothing. Furthermore, the word “safety” does not appear anywhere in the camera vendor contract so there is no incentive to make the streets safer only to generate money.