I was reading over the agenda for the City Council meeting tonight, and this caught my eye: “2010 Legislative Agenda Items.” It’s described as “a list of items [that] are submitted to our local legislators with the expectation that the items will be reviewed with possible action taken in Springfield.”

One of the items on that list is a request that Peoria be able to use red-light cameras:

9. Automated Traffic Law Enforcement Technology/Red Light Running Expansion.

Current law allows for a governmental agency in a municipality or county located in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Madison, St. Clair, and Will Counties to establish an automated traffic law enforcement system, in cooperation with a law enforcement agency that produces a recorded image of a motor vehicle’s response to a traffic control signal. The technology is designed to create a clear recorded image of the vehicle and the vehicle’s license plate. It further provides that the owner of the vehicle used in the violation is liable for the violation if the violation was recorded by the system, with exceptions. This legislation would give Peoria the authority to operate automated traffic enforcement technology for red light running.

On the one hand, I can understand the reason for the request. Since the City Council has cut dozens of police officers, the police department is having to look to alternative methods of law enforcement, including automation. These red-light cameras would allow intersections to be monitored without any officer present at all. If a vehicle runs a red light, the camera snaps a picture and the driver automatically get a traffic ticket in the mail.

On the other hand, however, photo enforcement is a bad idea. Consider this Chicago Tribune report that came out just over the weekend:

If improved safety is the goal of red-light cameras, then it is a mission largely unaccomplished for the first crop of area suburbs that raced to install the devices after they became legal in 2006, according to state data.

Accidents rose — in some cases, significantly — at half the 14 suburban intersections outfitted with traffic cameras by the end of 2007, the data show. The number of crashes fell at just five of those intersections after cameras went in, while two showed little change.

These findings aren’t unique to Chicago. In fact, numerous independent studies have shown an increase in traffic collisions due to red-light photo enforcement. Peoria (Arizona) saw the number of accidents double this past year at intersections where red-light cameras were installed.

Of course, these statistics are routinely ignored by municipalities because of another, more compelling statistic: increased revenues. Photo enforcement can be a cash cow for municipalities. A physical police officer at an intersection can only catch so many people in a day running red lights, whereas cameras catch every person, every time. That means a tremendous increase in the number of traffic citations, and hence, a windfall of revenue. A report by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, for example, found fine collections in Kingsport (TN) quadrupled after cameras were installed.

It’s because of this conflict of interest (revenues vs. safety) that many people are opposed to photo-enforcement.

The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and some municipalities with red-light cameras have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the love of money. The National Motorists Association reported in 2008 that six cities were caught shortening the length of yellow lights at photo-enforced intersections in order to increase revenue. In some cases, the yellow lights were so short that they were actually unsafe — i.e., drivers got caught in a situation where they were too close to the intersection to stop safely, but too far away to make it through before the light turned red. Thus, these municipalities were blatantly trading safety for revenue. In other cases, the municipalities simply tried to trick motorists by making the yellow light durations shorter at photo-enforced intersections and longer at non-enforced intersections.

Yellow light duration turned out to be an interesting topic when looking up information on red-light cameras. Several sources cite studies that show longer yellow light durations are more effective than photo-enforcement at increasing safety and reducing red-light running. So if safety is really the motivating factor here, perhaps instead of asking legislators to approve photo-enforcement in Peoria, the police department should ask the Traffic Engineering division to increase yellow phase duration at intersections.