Arizona May Abandon Speed Cameras on Highways

[nosbusa]

Arizona May Abandon Speed Cameras on Highways - NYTimes.com

PHOENIX (AP) — More than a year after Arizona became the first state in the country to deploy dozens of speed cameras on highways statewide, threats to the groundbreaking program abound.

Profits are far below expectations, a citizen effort to ban the cameras is gaining steam, the governor has said she does not like the program, and more and more drivers are ignoring the tickets they get in the mail after hearing from fellow speeders that there are often no consequences to doing so.

“I see all the cameras in Arizona completely coming down ” in 2010, said Shawn Dow, chairman of Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar, which is trying to get a measure banning the cameras on the November ballot. “The citizens of Arizona took away the cash cow of Arizona by refusing to pay.”

The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.

Supporters say the cameras slow down drivers and reduce accidents, but opponents argue that they are intrusive and are more about making money than safety.

More than 300 communities in 25 states use cameras similar to Arizona’s, including New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. But the backlash seems to be particularly intense in Arizona. Some people have shown their distaste with the cameras by covering them with boxes, sticky notes and Silly String. In locally infamous cases, one man took a pickax to a camera and another purposefully set off the cameras dozens of times while wearing a monkey mask.

Lt. Jeff King, photo enforcement district commander for the Department of Public Safety, said his agency just wanted drivers to go the speed limit and did not understand all the backlash.

“Instead of spending so much time focusing on getting rid of cameras, why don’t they focus on the real problem, the root problem, which is getting people to drive the speed limit?" Lieutenant King said. “If everyone was to drive the speed limit, the cameras would never flash.”

The cameras led to more than 700,000 tickets to drivers going 11 miles per hour or more over the speed limit from September 2008 to September 2009, the most recent data available, according to the Department of Public Safety. The mandated fines and surcharges on all those tickets would total more than $127 million, but they had generated just $36.8 million through September, Lieutenant King said.

Some of the people who got those tickets are contesting them in court and could end up having to pay the fine, but many of them have gone unpaid because drivers know they have a good shot at getting away with ignoring them. When people get tickets, they can pay without question, request a court date and fight the ticket, or simply ignore the ticket because law enforcement cannot prove they received it. The ticket becomes invalid if a violator who ignores it is not served in person within three months. It is nearly impossible to say how many people have ignored their tickets because courts do not track the figure.

Whatever the figure, overtaxed process servers cannot get to most of those people, and many of the citations go unpaid. That is part of the reason the speed cameras have not made as much money as expected. While certain to increase, that $36.8 million in revenue through September will still fall far below the $120 million a year that former Gov. Janet Napolitano hoped to put in the state’s coffers when she ordered up the program in early 2007.

The camera operator, Redflex, may not even be breaking even. It cost the company $16 million to install the cameras, and it got back $4.6 million from September 2008 to June, Lieutenant King said.

[swarga]

The camera operator, Redflex, may not even be breaking even. It cost the company $16 million to install the cameras, and it got back $4.6 million from September 2008 to June, Lieutenant King said.

[STiMULi]

I feel so sad that the cameras are coming off the highway,

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2GciwocJiw]YouTube - FRED ASTAIRE and GINGER ROGERS will be happy I'm sure ( music By Tom Zeri )[/ame]

It actually sickens me. While I watch the happy dance

[supercowpowers]

Lt. Jeff King, photo enforcement district commander for the Department of Public Safety, said his agency just wanted drivers to go the speed limit and did not understand all the backlash.

“Instead of spending so much time focusing on getting rid of cameras, why don’t they focus on the real problem, the root problem, which is getting people to drive the speed limit?" Lieutenant King said. “If everyone was to drive the speed limit, the cameras would never flash.”

I don't think he realized the point he made. The camera program proved that their PSLs are unrealistic and widely disregarded.

I don't know how to feel. I used to think that pervasive, inescapable enforcement would be the only way to effect the political will to raise the speed limiit. Unfortunately, in a political climate in which it's possible for the people to ask for and receive a higher speed limit, it's also possible for the people to focus on the short term issue of just removing the enforcement.

[voyager7]

The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.

I saw some on the 101 in Scottsdale in 2007 when I was there at Easter.
My brother showed them to me on the way home from the airport.
Were cities using them before the state was?

[STiMULi]

The Arizona Department of Public Safety introduced the cameras in September 2008 and slowly added more until all 76 were up and running by January.

I saw some on the 101 in Scottsdale in 2007 when I was there at Easter.
My brother showed them to me on the way home from the airport.
Were cities using them before the state was?

Yes!

And they will continue to use them too.

The state will not try to touch the funding resource. They may require larger signage. It would also be great to find againt the manufacturers and the jusrisdiction for accidents and injuries caused by their use. Too many times I have seen other smack on the brakes at the first hint of a Yellow instead of follwowng it through, like we used to.

Road runner : Red-light-cam marker falls short of standard

By Andrea Kelly
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.21.2009

Like lots of you, when Dianne Patterson got a red-light camera ticket in the mail, she decided to do all she could to fight the citation.

While the judge hasn't yet issued a ruling in her case, she did get the federal government's attention during her campaign. And she may have found some backup for her cause, and that of other red-light-camera critics.

Patterson contacted the National Motorist Association, researched state law and looked up the federal guidelines for signs and traffic control.

She couldn't find any guidelines for the "wait" lines painted at the left-turn lanes on two Tucson red-light-camera intersections in the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the manual that regulates everything from scenic-lookout signs to stop signs, traffic-signal design and crosswalk painting. It sets national standards so we all understand the rules and signs as we move between cities and states.

When she couldn't find the wait lines in the manual, Patterson wrote to the Federal Highway Administration asking about them. She got a letter from the acting director of transportation operations with some news.

"The MUTCD (manual) does not contain any provisions for the use of transverse lines to indicate the legal limits of an intersection for red-light-violation purposes," the letter states. In short, the law doesn't provide for any such thing.

The lines painted at the intersection of North Oracle Road and West River Road, and at East 22nd Street and South Wilmot Road, were meant to mark the legal point at which a person is running a red light.

I've often told readers who call me that, yes, we were taught to stop at the stop line if the light is red. But the legal definition of the intersection, at least in Arizona, lies beyond that stop line.

When you cross the stop line or crosswalk on the yellow, you think you're in the clear. But according to state laws, you may not have technically entered the intersection yet. At large intersections, you've got a ways to go before you've officially "entered" the intersection, which is based on the end of the curbs.

To do that legally, you've got to be "in the intersection" on a green or yellow signal. The Tucson Police and Transportation departments painted lines at these places, and painted the word "wait" on the inside of the line, presumably to keep people from crossing it on a red light.

That's a no-no, the feds say. "It is unlikely that drivers from other states who encounter these markings in Arizona would understand their meaning or intent. The word marking 'WAIT,' although technically not disallowed by the MUTCD, is of particular concern because it is visible to drivers at all times, even though it does not apply at all times," the Federal Highway Administration letter says.

In order for the lines to be legal, the city would have had to ask for special
approval to use them experimentally, which it did not.


What's next?

The city plans to remove the lines, but there's a backlog of maintenance for pavement markings, and the city's budget problems mean this just gets tacked on to the "to-do" list with no estimate of how long it will take to make the city legal, said Jim Glock, city transportation director.

The city also will have to figure out another way to educate drivers about the camera-enforced intersections, he said.

But what about all those tickets — past, present and future — issued to drivers based on the bogus line? It's unclear. After leaving messages for the sergeant in charge of photo radar for two days, a city police spokesman called back to say he was trying to get an interview set up. A call Friday about the interview request was not returned.

Red-light-camera haters should have a field day with this one.
Find Road Runner plus traffic cams and other transportation news at azstarnet.com/transportation. Send your questions by e-mail to [replacer_a] or to P.O. Box 26807, Tucson, AZ 85726. Please include your first and last names.

roadrunner@azstarnet.com

[BBBxcursion]

I hope they keep the cameras. I would rather have cameras because we have GPS locators for them. If there are no more cameras, the real cops will be out handing tickets that cannot be fought. I was born and raised in Chicago and there are cops EVERYWHERE clocking radar, it sucks. Atleast with a camera you get a warning, slow down, pass camera, and then speed up again.

[Freebird]

"At least with a camera you get a warning, slow down, pass camera, and then speed up again."

This is what makes the cameras unsafe. The slowing of traffic to pass the cameras then speeding up to the next camera causes rear end collisions. Much safer for the flow of traffic to move at a steady speed with out the cameras.

[STiMULi]

I hope they keep the cameras. I would rather have cameras because we have GPS locators for them. If there are no more cameras, the real cops will be out handing tickets that cannot be fought. I was born and raised in Chicago and there are cops EVERYWHERE clocking radar, it sucks. Atleast with a camera you get a warning, slow down, pass camera, and then speed up again.

Even with static cameras there are big safety factors and you just proved my point. You slow down for no apparent reason and cause a chain reaction and that could grow to the point of causing an accident.

HOWEVER...

Please let me in on where you are getting your GPS locations for the mobile cameras because I would like to have access to that database. Don't say Trapster because out here 99% of the time I am the first provider of that information to Trapster. That is why I am promoting the service over and over again out here.

Perhaps the article did not make it clear because REDFLEX manages both static and mobile cameras. I would say that a good portion of the citations are from mobile cameras.

Read This:
REDFLEXspeed® mobile | REDFLEX

This article may enlighten you as to the actual situation that REDFLEX is in:

Redflex Profit Nosedives as Motorists Ignore Photo Tickets

I would rather have the road plastered with real DPS than cameras because when there are people driving like idiots as they have no fear of the camera because they are driving a stolen vehicle, there is not one single camera that will pull them over and arrest them. I have been saying from the beginning, the cameras have nothing to do with safety. They have to do with MONEY!

We need the mobile cameras to go away.

Case closed

[dahozzman]

"I have been saying from the beginning, the cameras have nothing to do with safety. They have to do with MONEY!"

Very much a truth. Mentioned in another thread about Santa Ana getting their hands slapped big time by a local Judge for setting all but one yellow at camera intersections at 3.6 seconds while having preceeding and following intersections yellows at 4 seconds. More over, the one intersection they made public announcement about advertised by the local police chief the yellow would be 4 seconds.

Total bait and switch play on their part.