2 Cities to Keep Stoplight Cameras

Despite recent controversy, Ventura and Oxnard officials plan to continue using the unblinking eyes of cameras to catch red-light runners.

“It’s a tool,” Oxnard Assistant Police Chief Tom Cady said. “It saves an officer from having to work an intersection.”

A recent court ruling in San Diego tossed out hundreds of camera-snapped convictions, in part because of the way the contractor hired to run the system operated the cameras.

Only two cities in Ventura County--Ventura and Oxnard--use automatic cameras to take snapshots of vehicles that run red lights. The two systems operate with different equipment, technology and vendors.

Since July 1997, Oxnard has used Affiliated Computer Services cameras, the same camera vendor as San Diego, said Oxnard traffic engineer Joseph Genovese. The city has 11 intersections outfitted for the three or four film cameras that rotate from location to location and plans to equip two more intersections in the near future.

Although officials plan to review the San Diego court case, Oxnard seems to have more control over the system than San Diego does, Genovese said. “I’m not concerned about it for Oxnard,” he said. “We determine where the cameras go.”

The cameras were installed at no cost to the city, and the vendor now claims $25 of every $271 ticket issued, Cady said. Last year the cameras captured 2,475 red-light violations, he said.

The San Diego cameras would snap a single photo of the front of a vehicle as it went through a red light. The film was stamped with an electronic notation indicating the time and conditions of the traffic lights at the time of the violation. But opponents argued that the indicators were prone to manipulation, because Affiliated Computer Services had a financial interest in seeing that more tickets were issued.

Oxnard’s cameras work similarly, snapping a single photo of drivers as they trip a sensor in the pavement, Cady said. But with Oxnard officers making the final determinations about whether to issue a citation, the city seems to have more control than San Diego did.

“So far, we’re happy with how things are going,” Cady said. In San Diego, “the judge’s issue had to do with the contractual arrangement and the splitting of the money.”

Oxnard’s contract for the cameras will expire at the end of 2002.

Ventura officials also feel confident that the San Diego case will not affect them.

“The ruling seemed to be more on how they managed their system,” said Tom Mericle, Ventura’s transportation engineer. “We’re using a completely different system.”

Ventura’s first two camera-equipped sites became active March 1 at Victoria Avenue intersections with Telegraph and Telephone roads. The city now has nine intersections outfitted with red-light cameras, and four more will be set up within the next few months, said Mericle, who serves on an Institute of Transportation Engineers committee that studies how to prevent red-light running.

City officials chose intersections based on a variety of factors, including the number of accidents related to red-light running, the volume of traffic and the number of red-light violations issued by police.

Ventura’s cameras, which are operated by the Australian company RedFlex, bear only a superficial resemblance to their Oxnard and San Diego counterparts, Mericle said.

“I believe that ours is different enough because of the way the evidence is shown,” he said. “Our system is pretty solid in terms of being accurate.”

Instead of using film, Ventura cameras take four digital images of each potential violator, Mericle said. The camera captures an image of the vehicle as it enters the intersection, an image of the rear license plate, a close-up of the driver’s face and an overview of the intersection that shows the red light.

“All the evidence is in the picture,” Mericle said. “We’re looking at clear violations. It’s producing evidence that is defensible in court and is accurate.”

RedFlex officials in Arizona retrieve and process the images, and officers from the Ventura Police Department sort through them to determine which ones show clear violations that could withstand a court challenge.

Only drivers who cross into an intersection after a signal turns red are in violation, Mericle said.

“You can enter on the yellow,” he said. “The system is not even active until after the red.”

Within 10 days of the capture of the images, violators receive citations in the mail and a $271 fine.

For the first 18 months of Ventura’s program, RedFlex will receive 87% of the revenue from the tickets, Mericle said. That amount helps cover the equipment and installation, which cost Ventura nothing.

“It’s a significant amount of cost involved,” Mericle said. But “there’s no out-of-pocket expense from the city.”

Each of the outfitted intersections in Ventura has two to five cameras, and each camera costs $20,000 to $30,000, Mericle said. After the 18 months, the percentage RedFlex receives from each citation drops dramatically, he said.

Because of a variety of engineering improvements, the number of accidents in Ventura dropped from about 2,500 in 1987 to about 1,400 a year now, Mericle said. In a few months, the city should have enough data to study whether the cameras have had an effect on driving conditions, he said.

“The intent is to increase safety,” he said.

Even if an intersection does not have cameras, drivers who know that a city uses them might be more careful to avoid running a red light, Genovese said.

“The impact is more widespread than just at the locations,” he said.