Anaheim will BAN RED LIGHT Cameras

Anaheim will place an intiative on the ballot to Ban Red Light cmaeras. Arizona should follow.

Anaheim, red-light cameras - latimes.com

Anaheim, red-light cameras - latimes.com

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Arizona speed cameras incite a mini revolt

From todays LA Times

A masked man, a citizens group, a judge and other motorists are behind the fight against photo enforcement.

... since the Grand Canyon State began enforcing speed limits with roadside cameras, motorists are raging against the machines: They have blocked out the lenses with Post-it notes or Silly String. During the Christmas holidays, they covered the cameras with boxes, complete with wrapping paper.

One dissenting citizen went after a camera with a pick ax.

Arizona is the only state to implement "photo enforcement," as it's known, on major highways and is one of 12 states and 52 communities, plus the District of Columbia, with speed cameras, according to the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

In California, speed cameras are illegal, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a program to add speed enforcement capabilities to 500 red-light cameras to generate $338 million for the 2010-11 budget. The proposal is unlikely to be a part of the Legislature's upcoming budget recommendations.

California State Assembly Budget Committee Chairwoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) has described the proposal as "silly."

"It's using big-brother tactics to balance the state budget," she said. "It's outlandish."

That's certainly been the reaction in Arizona, where the cameras have incited a mini revolt.

Initially, the cameras were thought of as a revenue generator, expected to bring in more than $90 million in the first fiscal year of operation.

But from October 2008, when the program began, to October 2009, the cameras generated about $19 million for the state's cash-strapped general fund, according to a report on photo radar released by the Arizona Office of the Auditor General last month.

Among the dissenters fighting photo enforcement are members of a citizens group, the Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar.

In Maricopa County -- where 92% of Arizona's violations occur -- volunteers have been on the streets for about a year, gathering signatures for a 2010 ballot initiative to remove the cameras. On a December afternoon, Shawn Dow, chairman of the group, and two volunteers gathered signatures at an Arizona State University basketball game.

California Rejects Speed Cameras

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to install cameras that automatically ticket speeding drivers hit a roadblock Wednesday.

Several members of the Senate budget committee expressed serious concerns about the idea ...

The proposal would raise nearly $400 million, including $297 million for the state's general fund to help reduce a $19.9 billion deficit. The plan would provide $41 million for court security and $59.6 million for cities and counties.

But a variety of groups testified against the idea, from the Teamsters union to the Automobile Club of Southern California. Teamsters lobbyist Barry Broad warned that cities could manipulate the length of traffic light sequences to encourage more speeding drivers – and more revenue.

Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, called it a "terrible idea." He said it was being driven by a desire to raise money, when it should be considered only if it enhances safety.

"This is a cynical attempt to generate revenue without dealing with the policy," he said.

Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, said he was concerned that cameras could lead to more rear-end accidents.


Sacramento Bee February 4, 2010
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/2511841.html

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2511740.html

Wake-up Cal-i-Forn-i-a!

Governor Arnold is now proposing the dumbest solution in history for the California budget problem - SPEED CAMERAS! SPEED CAMERAS make the Speed camera contractor rich and infuriate drivers. If he wanted to do something he should work on stopping the traffic congestion and promote synchronization of red lights to cut down on green house gases but that would not generate money for the state to spend...

New Year Could Bring End to Speed Cameras

Amanda L. Myers, The Associated Press
December 30, 2009 - 9:15PM , updated: December 31, 2009 - 2:56PM

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 continues to gain steam, the governor has said she does not like the program, and more and more drivers getting tickets in the mail are ignoring them after hearing from fellow speeders that there are often no consequences to that choice.
"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 voter initiative 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, while opponents argue that they are intrusive and are more about making money than safety.
More than 300 U.S. 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 a few locally infamous cases, one man took a pickax to a camera and another purposefully triggered the cameras dozens of times while wearing a monkey mask.
DPS Lt. Jeff King, photo enforcement district commander, said his agency just wants drivers to go the speed limit and doesn't 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?" he said. "If everyone was to drive the speed limit, the cameras would never flash."
More than 700,000 tickets were given out to drivers going 11 mph or more over the speed limit by the cameras between September 2008 and September this year, the most recent data available, according to DPS.
If the mandated $181.50 in fines and surcharges were collected on all those tickets, that would total more than $127 million. But they had generated just $36.8 million through September, 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 drivers get tickets, they have four options — pay without question, say they weren't driving and send in their driver's license photo as proof, request a court date and fight the ticket, or simply ignore the ticket because law enforcement can't prove they received it. The ticket becomes invalid if a violator who ignores it isn't served in person within three months.
It's nearly impossible to say how many people have ignored their tickets because courts don't track the figure. The number has been estimated to be as high as 70 percent.
Whatever the figure, overtaxed process servers can't get to most of those people, and many of the citations go unpaid.
That's part of the reason the speed cameras haven't 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 DPS to develop the program in early 2007.
Camera operator Redflex may not even be breaking even. It cost the company $16 million to install the cameras, and they got $4.6 million back between September 2008 and June, King said.
In a statement to shareholders, Redflex executives said that they expected to make even less money on the program in the first half of the 2010 financial year than the same time period last year, estimating that the net profit before tax would be about $4 million. The executives partially cited people who aren't paying their tickets for the low revenue.
Reflex spokeswoman Shoba Vaitheeswaran said the company hopes to improve revenues by streamlining the process by which violators get their tickets, although she did not get into specifics, and added that a public-awareness campaign is a possibility.
"I should point out that Redflex is in this for the long haul," she said. "This is a massive, first-of-its-kind deployment which requires a large capital outlay of equipment, backend technology, etcetera ... We feel it's here to stay."
She said the company is confident that as the process is refined, more drivers will pay their tickets.
As for state revenues, King said Arizona's general fund got nearly $20 million from the speed cameras through September.
Paul Senseman, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, said while a far cry from what the previous administration had anticipated getting, "$20 million is a lot of money for anybody."
Brewer hasn't said what she would do with legislation stopping the program, which could be proposed in 2010, but has said she doesn't like the intrusiveness of the cameras.
"She believes the evidence is clear from the beginning that it was created more as a revenue source," Senseman said.

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/148958

Right Turn Violations

We just spent Christmas in Phoenix! Speed is not the problem. Everyone in town seems to believe that you can turn right on a red without STOPPING! Come on, this is serious, I almost sent a couple of you on to the happy hunting ground of your ancestors. LOOK! If the car coming through the green is traveling at the speed limit of 35, 45, 50 and you are going less than 5, you cannot get around the corner fast enough to save yourself. Get over it! Stop and when you have a clear path, than you can go. With all of the time that the police have to not enforce speed violations, they should have time to stop drivers running red lights when turning right.

Attention REDFLEX the guy in the rental car flipping you off was me. There should be several pictures. In every case, I was braking to avoid cars in front of me stopping to avoid your cameras.