Suburban Red Light Camera Revenue Declining
From Naperville to Arlington Heights, Geneva to Orland Park and many towns in between, revenue from suburban red light camera programs is declining according to the Chicago Tribune.
The newspaper surveyed towns all over the greater Chicagoland area and found universally, RLC violations and revenue are down.
In some cases, the decline is stunning.
In west suburban Geneva, revenue has dropped from $364,000 in the first year cameras were installed to a miniscule $10,700 so far in 2012.
In Northfield, when cameras were installed in 2008 the town saw approximately $850,000 in first year revenues. That has declined to about $200,000 mainly due to IDOT removing the right turn on red option at one camera intersection within city limits.
Naperville’s red light camera revenue has dropped to zero. That’s right $0. The town killed their program by not renewing their contract with their RLC vendor as two of the four cameras in town were coming down due to construction. But this move cost the city about $260,000 in annual revenue.
Here’s the full story, “Red-light camera revenue is falling in some suburbs.”
This is good right? I mean, the whole point of red light cameras is safety, and not revenue. If revenue is down, that means people are obeying laws, which is what the towns want, right?
Red light cameras depend upon design and engineering flaws of the intersections where they are placed, technical right on red violations, and the fact that successfully contesting them is practically impossible.
Suburbs rely primarily on intersections with high volumes of right turning traffic. I refuse to turn on red with an RLC present and I am not the only one. Avoiding one false RoR ticket is saving more time than all the time spent waiting for a green combined.
So when they say ‘drivers getting used to them’ it is my belief they are talking about not turning right on red.
Without right on red revenue the suburban RLC scam falls apart. The other factors that make RLCs profitable largely don’t exist in the suburbs.
Good, I hope these suburbs realize that their plan for “safety” (revenue generating) is no longer successful. The only way to make money on a Red light camera in the suburbs is to either a) make the yellow light very short, or b) hand out thousands of right turn on red tickets for not coming to a complete stop for 3 seconds.
I hope these suburbs are now losing money.
Greg,
Sure, village trustees all over the suburbs are clicking their heels in joy over the hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to improved “safety.”