By Jerry Garrett
The New York Times Blogs
LOS ANGELES — The vote by the council stands as the most visible rejection of the controversial systems to date.
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to terminate the city’s unpopular and unproductive red-light-camera program, effective July 31.
Lack of viable enforcement was one of the key reasons the program ended, council members said. Although more than 180,000 drivers were ticketed under the program, which began in 2004, a city-authorized audit found that up to just 60 percent of the tickets were paid. Apparently, the manner in which the photo-enforcement law was written made compliance a voluntary action.
From its beginning, the program has been controversial. Critics said it did little to improve public safety or reduce instances of red-light running. A city study found that the cameras generally were installed at intersections thought to hold the highest likelihood of producing revenue, rather than the highest incidence of traffic accidents stemming from running the lights.
In 2010, the council voted to boycott commerce with Arizona-based businesses and governments in a principled stand against that state’s immigration laws. However, when it was noted that American Traffic Solutions, the operator of the city’s red-light camera system, was based in Scottsdale, an exemption was given.
Critics accused the council of hypocrisy, in that the American Traffic Solutions contract was spared from the boycott only because it was believed to be generating income for the city. However, a city audit of 2010 departmental budgets found the program was failing to generate the projected levels of income. In fact, amid a budget crisis, the city was found to be pumping more than $1 million into the program to keep it solvent.
A proposal by the company to install even more cameras in an effort to boost city revenue was rejected; city auditors argued that more cameras would only mean a greater shortfall.
A critical measure of backing for the camera program evaporated last month when the city’s Police Commission voted against its continuation. The Los Angeles Superior Court system also had expressed reluctance to enforce fines for the issued citations because the tickets were mailed to the registered owners of the vehicles cited, who may not always have been the guilty parties.
The court’s stance has been applied to cases in the City of Los Angeles and to 31 other photo enforcement programs elsewhere in Los Angeles County. The future of those programs is uncertain. Some cities in Orange County have banned the cameras, and officials in Westminster and the City of Orange are mulling legislation against them. (The camera programs with American Traffic Solutions and Redflex, a competitor, also have been canceled by numerous cities and towns, or outlawed by voters, across the country.)
There was no official comment on Wednesday’s vote from American Traffic Solutions, but a note on the company’s Web site said that as of July 8, some 28 additional communities throughout the nation had signed or extended contracts for photo enforcement systems. The company says it has 230 customers in the United States and Canada, as well as contracts for the operation of up to 3,000 cameras. The City of Los Angeles had 32 cameras.
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