Red Light Cameras: O.C. Results Blurry

The five Orange County cities that use cameras to catch red light violators do not know how effective they are, or even whether they generate enough ticket revenue to offset their cost, the Orange County Grand Jury reported Tuesday.

The reason: The accounting system used by the county Superior Court does not distinguish whether drivers are ticketed by traffic officers or by mail through the camera system.

Cameras are used in Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano, and in each one, the number of intersection accidents have declined since the cameras were installed. But officials say they cannot necessarily credit the cameras for the improvement.

Nor is it clear whether the cameras are the revenue producers that some say they are.

Costa Mesa City Manager Allan Roeder said his city may be losing money on the cameras because there was no way to track the revenue they generated.

“Is it cost-effective? Well, we don’t know,” he said. “It’s a key question, and we’ve been working with the vendor and the court to identify a means to answer that. We’ve been unable to reconcile with the courts what the city’s revenue is from the cameras.”

The question of camera-triggered traffic fines is relevant in Costa Mesa because council members voted to use the photo-generated “excess revenues” to establish a driver’s education program for young drivers, Roeder said.

“But we haven’t been able to move forward with that because we haven’t been able to identify the revenue generated by the cameras,” he said. “The grand jury report highlighted the problem. It’s probably a good time to sit down and look at this system.”

Costa Mesa has cameras at 15 intersection approaches and pays the vendor $7,000 per approach per month. That amounts to $28,000 each month for an intersection with four approaches.

Vendors typically absorb the cost of installing red light cameras, which costs $50,000 to $100,000 per approach, said the grand jury report. Then they rent the systems to the cities for about $5,000 or $6,000 per month for each approach, said the report, less than what Roeder said Costa Mesa paid Nestor Traffic Systems.

Redflex Traffic Systems is the vendor that contracts with the other cities.

The cost-effectiveness of the cameras has also been debated among Garden Grove police, said Sgt. Jeff Nightengale, who heads the department’s traffic unit. He said the devices were intended to reduce accidents at problem intersections and weren’t adopted as a money maker.

According to the grand jury report, the cameras appear to have reduced the number of accidents at intersections where they are being used. When three intersections in each city were studied, accidents declined 47% in Garden Grove, 28% in Costa Mesa, 16% in Santa Ana, 12% in San Juan Capistrano and 6% in Fullerton.

But the report cautioned that the figures may be misleading, because police reports did not attribute all of the accidents at the intersections to drivers running red lights.

The report also said accidents actually increased at two intersections where cameras were in use.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Cause and effect?

A study of the five Orange County cities that use red light cameras, or RLCs, showed a decline in accidents after the cameras were installed, but it’s unclear how many of the earlier accidents were caused by drivers who ran red lights.

Number of accidents, by city:

(At three intersections using red light cameras)

*--* City 1 year 1 year Percentage before RLC after RLC change

Costa Mesa 39 28 -28.2% Fullerton 88 83 -5.7 Garden Grove 45 24 -46.7 Santa Ana 68 57 -16.2 San Juan Capistrano 33 29 -12.1 *--*

Number of approaches*, by city: (As of May 1)

*--* Costa Mesa 15 Santa Ana 14 Garden Grove 11 Fullerton 6 San Juan Capistrano 4 *--*

Where a sample $336 fine goes:

*--* City $137.70 Superior Court $130.27 State $68.03 *--*

*Each intersection has multiple “approaches” covered by red light cameras. Cities lease the cameras per approach. For instance, Costa Mesa pays $7,000 per month per approach.

Source: Orange County Grand Jury 2004-05