#redlight camera

The Supreme Court of Illinois on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a case that will decide whether Chicago's red light camera program has been illegally operating for more than a decade. Redflex Traffic Systems of Australia began issuing tickets in the Windy City three years before the state legislature granted select jurisdictions permission to use automated ticketing machines. This makes the city's photo ticketing ordinance illegal, say Michael Reagan and Patrick J. Keating, lawyers who filed a class-action lawsuit to shut the program down.    "This case draws upon the power and the duty of this court to declare governmental action to have been improper when it has found to have been taken without the power to act and to declare law void when it is found unconstitutional," Reagan told the justices. "Chicago did not have municipal authority to enact its red light camera ordinance in 2003."    Like many jurisdictions that jump head first into automated ticketing, Chicago was not interested more than a decade ago in waiting for the state legislature to enact an authorization statute for the lucrative program that now issues 700,000 tickets per year. Reagan argued that Chicago's implementation of automated ticketing violated a statute requiring uniformity of traffic laws across the state.

 This means, Reagan argued, that the city would have to "enact an ordinance" under the new law to take advantage of its legal protection. Chicago has not done so. The statute only applies to cities within Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, and Will Counties. That means some of the smallest towns can have automated ticketing, but many large cities such as Rockford and Peoria are excluded. Certain lawmakers insisted on the restrictions because they did not want cameras in their personal districts.

Red light camera vendor uses a spreadsheet to calculate profit based on engineering deficiencies such as short yellow time.

Redflex Traffic Systems uses a special spreadsheet to calculate precisely how much profit a city can expect from red light cameras on an intersection-by-intersection basis. WTKR-TV reported about the "violation calculator" that Redflex used to provide the city of Chesapeake, Virginia with the dollar figure it could expect after signing a contract with the Australian firm. The violation calculator is a more refined version of the criteria red light camera companies have always used. In 2001, a team of attorneys in San Diego, California used a court subpoena to obtain a copy of the confidential site evaluation performed by vendor Lockheed Martin (which now operates as Xerox). The decisions on where cameras were installed were based on finding high volume, downhill approaches where the yellow time was less than 4 seconds (view document). Redflex promised that within ten days of signing the contract, the firm would send the city a list of the most profitable intersections based on an eight-hour video assessment of each prime location. "Completing a detailed video analysis will ensure that Redflex and the city truly develop and implement a comprehensive 'approach strategy' that will provide the city with detailed information for accurate fact-based decisions on possible program expansion efforts," the 2009 Redflex proposal explained. The video survey is an old fashioned method of calculating profit, however. Redflex found that it could achieve 85 percent more accurate results with its violation calculator.  "Redflex has also developed an additional analysis approach that is truly unique to Redflex," the proposal explained. "Redflex sought the guidance of a renowned professor from Texas A&M University and the development of a 'Violation Calculator' that factors in not only the quantitative violation analysis, but the engineering factors at an approach level that would also influence driver behavior."

Lobbyists for municipalities and the photo enforcement industry won a big victory by killing a bill in the Colorado General Assembly that would have prohibited the use of red light cameras and speed cameras. The bill had passed the state Senate by a 21 to 14 vote last month only to hit a roadblock in the lower chamber last week. The House Committee on Appropriations voted 8 to 5 to postpone consideration of the bill indefinitely, a move that ended the measure's prospect for passage as lawmakers will adjourn for the year on Wednesday. The Appropriations Committee is firmly controlled by state House Speaker Mark Ferrandino (D-Denver) who was a primary sponsor of the bill, but the other primary House sponsor, state Representative Steve Humphrey (R-Severance) blames Governor John Hickenlooper (D) for ensuring the bill never made it to his desk.  "It was no secret the governor did not want to make a decision on this bill, and sadly for the citizens of Colorado, he convinced enough House Democrats to kill a bill that places raising revenue above public safety," Humphrey said in a statement. "I want to thank Speaker Ferrandino and share his disappointment that his caucus refused to save thousands of Coloradans the burden of paying millions in fines that do nothing to make our roads safer."