Police Commission Votes to end use of Cameras

The Los Angeles City Council today voted down a plan to leave some red light traffic cameras in place for data collection.
Following a unanimous vote by the Police Commission, the council voted in July to end its use of cameras to catch drivers running red lights at 32 intersections around the city. The cameras issued $400-plus tickets, but the Los Angeles County Superior Court refused to enforce the tickets.
In July, the council also asked the Department of Transportation to extend the length of yellow lights at traffic intersections. Today's vote to get rid of the electronic sentries was 10-3.
Councilmen Bernard Parks and Mitchell Englander sought to keep cameras at four intersections to test whether extending the length of yellow lights would lead to fewer red-light violations. Parks introduced a motion that would have kept the cameras up at four intersections for two months at a cost of $15,000, which he said would not break the city.
Parks said he thought LADOT "would want raw data and objective data versus speculative data."
But Pauline Chan, a senior engineer for LADOT, told the council that adding time to yellow lights to see if fewer violations occurred likely would not help improve traffic safety -- the reason city officials gave for installing them in the first place.
Looking at collision data would be the most effective way of figuring out how to reduce wrecks at red-light controlled intersections, Chan said.

"I believe that looking at four intersections ... over a very short period of time, because of monetary restrictions, would have probably very limited use and probably would not help us evaluate traffic safety impacts of extending the signal timing," Chan said.
Parks countered that looking at crash data would not be preventative.
"If we're going to wait for people to crash in the future, that's after the fact," he said.
Councilman Dennis Zine, a former traffic cop, urged the council to deny Parks' motion.
"The life support of this particular program needs to come to an end," he said.
"When are those 32 cameras going to be taken down?" he asked. "It's been over a month. Nothing has taken place. We need to have complete closure."
Chan said LADOT and LAPD could ask American Traffic Solutions, the contractor that manages the cameras, to remove the cameras immediately. Additional poles and cabinets to support the cameras would have to be removed by the city, she said.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_18886119