In an effort to reduce red light running and enhance traffic safety, the Austin, TX City Council voted to approve installing red light cameras at selected intersections throughout the city in November 2007.

“There is a problem here in Austin,” said Austin Communications Director Gene Acuna. The city is planning to activate the cameras during the Memorial Day weekend.  There will be no grace period.

According to Austin Police Department statistics, there were 1,300 accidents as a result of red light running.

Nine intersections will have cameras. But the city won’t say just yet which will be switched on first.

You’ll find them at I-35 and 11th Street; I-35 and 15th street; the northbound and southbound sides of Mopac and Wells Branch; both directions at Lamar and Ben White; Mopac and 290; Riverside and Pleasant Valley Road; and I-35 and MLK.

“The goal of the program has been always has been safety,” said Acuna.

Wayne Krause is Legal Director of the Texas Civil Rights Project.   He doesn’t think red light cameras make us any safer.

“We just had studies come out of England that show that there is no or very little safety advantage to having cameras out there,” he said.

He wonders if we’re giving up our rights for what the city calls safety.

“You really ought to ask the citizens if it’s what they want and whether their security and their rights are at stake,” Krause said.

Motorists we talked to about the city’s red light camera plan had mixed reactions.

“It’s too much surveillance too much big brother”, said motorist Steve Gillus.

Heather Shelby thinks it’s a good idea.

“I stop when it starts to turn yellow and I know a lot of people don’t. It causes accidents and raises our insurance,” she said.

The city will release a PSA on Monday, May 12th.

An effort has died in the Louisiana House that sought to limit revenues from speeding tickets for towns to between 10 percent and 35 percent. The issue, however, isn’t dead yet.

The House Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee voted 10-6 to kill a bill – HB1050 – from Rep. Hollis Downs, R-Ruston, that was intended to curtail communities in the state that pad their budgets with speed trap revenue.

Municipalities would have had their percentage of income resulting from speeding tickets limited. Towns with a population fewer than 1,000 could have kept only 35 percent of their revenue from speeding fines. Cities with populations between 1,000 and 3,000 could have kept only 20 percent, and municipalities with populations of at least 3,000 could have had only 10 percent.

Revenues exceeding those percentages would have been used for police training statewide.

Supporters said the protections are needed to dissuade local governments from relying on speeding tickets to fill city coffers. Such activities discourage travel and commerce throughout the state, they said.

Others said they want to rein in cities that use their police departments to “pester” nonresident drivers with unreasonable ticketing.

Opponents said if drivers want to avoid getting tickets in so-called “speed traps,” they should slow down.

A legislative auditor’s report released last summer showed there were at least 15 cities that generated more than half their total revenue during a three-year period from speeding tickets. The top revenue earner was Baskin, LA. The northeastern Louisiana village claimed 87 percent of total revenue from speeders.

Three other cities also claimed at least 85 percent of revenues from speeding fines.

Downs’ bill would have authorized the legislative auditor to investigate towns accused of cheating. Jurisdictions found guilty would have had all ticketing duties on state and federal highways in the area taken over by state police.

Another provision in the bill would have limited speed cameras to “high volume” locations or roads with high frequencies of speed-related wrecks.

Despite the setback, Downs isn’t done fighting for the legislation. He has introduced a similar effort – HB1329 – and sent it to a different committee.

Los Altos Hills, CA residents may have spotted Betty Kerns wielding a radar gun last month.

Kerns and her husband, Bill, weren’t working for the town, however, when they parked their car, calibrated their radar gun and measured the speed of motorists on two occasions in March. They were challenging speed-control practices in their town.

The Kernses’ goal: prove that the posted 25 mph speed limit on Moody and El Monte roads doesn’t reflect the average speed of traffic – or an appropriate speed – for the main roads through Los Altos Hills.

“Everybody is going over 25,” Kerns said of the two sections they patrolled along El Monte and Moody. The Kernses, who have both received speeding tickets on El Monte, argue that the town should not be targeting those who are safely driving more than 25 mph on that road or Moody. They base their claims in part on the state’s anti-speed-trap law, known as the 85th percentile speed rule. To be enforced with radar, speed limits should be set within 5 mph of the observed critical speed of 85 percent of drivers.

After conducting their own speed survey, the Kernses observed approximately 85 percent of the cars were driving at least 43 mph westbound on El Monte, between Interstate 280 and Moody.
In the straightaway, El Monte can look like an arterial, but as it climbs into the Hills and its name changes to Moody, it begins to wind. Cars share the circuitous two-lane road on Moody with bicycle, pedestrian and horse traffic.

Third-party contractor Traffic Data Service surveyed the speed limits on town roads by dividing the roads into 34 sections. The survey, completed in March 2007, indicated that Los Altos Hills speeds are in conformity with state law. Town engineer Richard Chiu said he has no reason to believe the survey is invalid.

But Betty believes the town’s survey failed to measure sufficiently this stretch and hopes to question the survey’s validity when her husband goes to court May 14 for driving 40 mph last November.

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When it comes to getting a speeding ticket, a News 8 investigation shows there are two North Texas cities where the odds are against you.

Over a one-year period of time and on a total of just six miles of road, the two communities wrote a combined amount of $775,000 in tickets.

Why so many tickets? Here’s a hint; they say it’s not about the money.

News 8 collected speeding ticket data from all the cities along the Bush Turnpike and the Dallas North Tollway.

Between the cities of Dallas, Plano and Frisco, there is 22.5 miles of toll road. During a recent one year period on that stretch of road, those cities wrote a combined 100 speeding tickets.

However, Irving, which has four miles of toll road, wrote nearly 2,000 tickets. And then there is the city of Garland. While it has a tiny two-mile stretch area on the Turnpike, it wrote more tickets than any other city, almost 2,500 of them. Garland collected almost $400,000 in revenue.

“From the police departments standpoint, no,” said Joe Harn, a Garland Police Department spokesperson, when asked if the tickets were about money. “Ours is about safety.”

News 8 shared findings with attorney Everett Newton, who defends motorists at traffic court.

“It’s kind of like if you go fishing, you go to the pond where the fish are,” he said. “You don’t go fishing where there aren’t any fish.” And here’s what makes the Bush Turnpike a good pond, the speed limit is set artificially low. “I think it creates a really, really bad situation, potentially for drivers who drive on that stretch of roadway,” Newton said.

In a series of reports, News 8 has shown that the North Texas Tollway Authority did not follow state guidelines for setting speed limits. Transportation sources say within the year the NTTA plans to raise the current speed limit on the Bush Turnpike from 60 to 70. Meanwhile, they have been set at 60 for years.

“I don’t believe the speed limits have, in any way, set a traffic trap for motorists,” said Sherita Coffelt, the NTTA’s spokesperson.

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