Denver City USA - Auditor questions photo radar (speed camera), red light cameras
Denver must prove that its controversial photo-radar and photo-red-light programs are making the streets safer, or people will think they exist only to raise money, according to a city audit.
The Denver Auditor's Office last week issued a report about the two programs that use video and photos to catch traffic violators, saying they should be shut down unless the city can prove they are a public-safety benefit.
"These programs were sold as public-safety enhancements but are widely viewed as a cash grab," Auditor Dennis Gallagher wrote in a letter last week to Manager of Safety Alex Martinez. "It undermines public trust to maintain photo enforcement programs that are profitable but whose safety impact has not been conclusively shown."
The City Council next month is scheduled to decide whether to renew a $700,000 contract with the private company that operates the photo-red-light system at four Denver intersections. That program is especially controversial because since May, drivers who stop with their front tires past the stop line have been dinged with $75 fines.
From May to October, violations at those four intersections resulted in $1.3 million in fines, compared with $230,000 from January to April.
"I get a good number of complaints (about that)," said City Councilwoman Jeanne Robb. "We need to have a public discussion about this."
The City Council might push to cut the stop-line fines in half.
City traffic engineer Brian Mitchell said fewer crashes are being recorded at intersections where photo-red-light enforcement has been set up and where yellow-light clearance time has been lengthened.
"The good news is, at all of the intersections looked at, we are trending downward," he said.
The audit that was delivered Thursday also insists that the city prove the photo-radar program has reduced speeds and accidents, and improved pedestrian safety.
The program, which uses photo- radar-equipped vans deployed around the city, generated $3.6 million in revenues in 2010 and nearly $6 million this year through Oct. 24.
The city says a 2009 study of the program showed a decrease in speeds in eight of the 10 most frequently enforced photo-radar areas. City officials say they will conduct another study to cover the three-year period from 2010 to 2012.
But the officials say it will be difficult to determine whether photo radar has decreased the number of accidents and pedestrian injuries because locations of those events are random.
Still, according to the city, accidents throughout Denver declined by about 24 percent to 22,242 in 2010 from 29,100 in 2002, the year photo radar was introduced.