After nearly a year, red light, speeding program paying off as ticket numbers drop

Latice Tidwell was driving past Renton High School when she saw a flash of light.

“I seen a flash. All I seen was a big ol’ flash,” the Renton resident said.

That flash was from a camera capturing her speeding in a school zone.

Shortly after that flash, Tidwell, who had been driving her son to school, received a ticket — just one of the more than 21,000 issued by the City of Renton’s Photo Enforcement Program since the program began last summer.

Cameras monitor speeders at three schools and red-light runners at four intersections in Renton.

Renton city officials started the pilot program last June in an effort to decrease traffic accidents. The schools and intersections were selected based on citizen complaints, plus collision and speed studies.

“It’s all about safety,” Renton Police Commander Kent Curry says of the program. “It’s all about safety in the school zones, it’s all about safety in the intersections.”

Curry is commander of patrol services for Renton Police Department and manager of the Photo Enforcement Program.

He says it’s too early to judge the program’s success. But he can say that the number of tickets given as part of the program has decreased substantially since the cameras started running.

Those decreases in citations — by as much as 50 percent for cameras at the intersections — are a sign that people are stopping and slowing down as the law requires, Curry says.

“There’s been some data that has shown we’re getting the voluntary compliance we’re seeking, and the program hasn’t even been in effect the whole year,” he says.

Curry updated City Council on the program during a recent presentation to the Committee of the Whole.

Through March, vehicle owners received about 21,850 tickets from the program since the month-long warning periods ended. About 7,380 of those tickets were for running red lights and about 14,470 for speeding in school zones.

  • Tickets issued from June 2008 through March 2009: 21,852
  • Red-light tickets: about 7,380
  • School-zone tickets: 14,469
  • More than 60 percent of vehicle owners who received citations where not Renton residents
  • Cost to the City of Renton: $829,918 a year. $468,000 a year for the ATS contract and $361,918 a year for two judicial specialists, a pro-tem judge, an interpreter and 1.1 police employee
  • Revenue from the program: $1.4 millon

The red-light cameras run 24 hours a day.

The school-zone cameras are programmed to coincide with the start and end of the school day. Hours are different for each school. Yellow lights flash when the cameras are recording. Because Renton High has an open campus, that camera is on for the entire school day. At Talbot Hill, the camera is also on during morning and afternoon kindergarten.

Tickets issued for running red lights at the monitored intersections numbered 630 during June, when the red-light cameras became fully operational. Those tickets increased until September, when they spiked at 1,062, before gradually decreasing to 523 in March.

The pattern is more up and down for the number of tickets issued for speeding near the three monitored schools. Those tickets numbered 1,056 in September, topped out at 3,627 in October, then decreased during the November and December holidays before ending at 2,381 in March.

Most of the program’s red-light tickets — 4,320 at the end of March — have been issued for running the red lights at the intersection of South Grady Way at Rainier Avenue South. That busy downtown intersection has three cameras: one at the southbound, eastbound and westbound approaches. The other three monitored intersections have only one camera filming one approach.

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Those intersections are: Northeast Third Street at Sunset Boulevard North, East Valley Road at Southwest 43rd Street, and Sunset Boulevard North at Bronson Way North. All four intersections ranked in the top 10 in a 2008 Renton high-collision report.

The two intersections of Southwest 43rd Street and Bronson Way North have not been far behind the South Grady Way intersection in terms of red-light tickets issued. But the intersection of Northeast Third Street at Sunset Boulevard North has lagged far behind, with only 141 tickets issued during the nine-month period. Curry said that camera may be faulty. If it is working, he said the camera may have slowed down red-light runners enough to justify its removal.

Most of the Photo Enforcement Program tickets issued for school-zone speeding have been for speeding in the four lanes in front of the downtown Renton High School.

That stretch of South Second Street has 30 to 40 percent more vehicles than the other two monitored school zones, Curry says.

About 11,990 tickets were issued to speeders in front of Renton High through March, including tickets issued during the month-long warning period.

During the same period, only 3,417 tickets were issued for speeding near McKnight Middle School. Only 3,861 tickets were issued near Talbot Hill Elementary, but that school’s camera came online a month after the other two schools.

Talbot Hill is a commuter route just north of Valley Medical Center on Talbot Road, and McKnight is on a lesser-traveled road – Edmonds Avenue Northeast – in the Renton Highlands.

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Speed studies conducted by Renton Police Department determined that most of the city’s school-zone speeding occurred near these three schools.

Renton’s Photo Enforcement Program is still in its infancy. Curry says it will take a full year’s worth of data to determine the benefits, costs and results of the program. But he’s hopeful that the decreased number of tickets correlates to a decreased number of vehicle crashes.

He told the Committee of the Whole he plans to compile collision statistics from the past year this June.

June will mark one year since the red-light cameras became operational, after a month-long warning period. The cameras outside the three Renton schools came on board on a more staggered schedule — in September for McKnight and Renton High and in October for Talbot Hill. Month-long warning periods were also in effect for the school-zone cameras.

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The Renton cameras are provided by Arizona-based company American Traffic Solutions. ATS is running much of the program for Renton, but a Renton police officer makes a final decision on issuing each citation, which comes to vehicle owners in the mail with pictures and details of the violation, as well as a link to a 12-second online video of the violation.

Washington State Legislature passed a law in 2005 legalizing Renton’s program. Similar programs are operational in cities across the country. That state law says that these photographed violations must be treated like a parking violation. That means the ticket is issued to the owner of the vehicle. It also means the fine cannot exceed that of a parking ticket and the violation does not go on the driving record of the vehicle’s owner.

The fine for a red-light ticket is $124. The fine for a school-zone ticket is $124 if the car is going 6-15 mph over the 20 mph speed limit, and $250 for more than 15 mph over the speed limit.

Most of the program’s school-zone violations issued through March were for going 6-10 mph over the speed limit.

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Renton’s Photo Enforcement Program is costing the city $829,918 a year. But revenue from tickets – $1.4 million – has exceeded costs so far. That figure will likely increase after more people pay their tickets. Twenty-four percent of ticketed vehicle owners have not responded to their tickets. Curry says the city will likely send those tickets to a collections agency in May.

Any money in excess of what’s needed to operate the program will go toward improving police enforcement.

Some of that extra money may also fund cameras at additional intersections and school zones with high numbers of collisions and speeding complaints.

About 20 percent, or one out of five, people ticketed by the Photo Enforcement Program have protested their tickets in Renton Municipal Court.

Curry has heard both positive and negative comments about the program, but he says most of the feedback is positive, especially about the school-zone cameras.

Mayor Denis Law’s feedback is also positive.

“Our preliminary evaluation shows that the program is working and people are paying attention,” he said in a statement.

RENTON INTERSECTIONS

WITH RED-LIGHT CAMERAS

OPERATING 24 HOURS A DAY

Northeast Third Street at Sunset Boulevard North, westbound

• 141 tickets issued

• 170 collisions from 2002-2007.

• East Valley Road at Southwest 43rd Street, southbound

• 1,554 tickets issued.

• 98 collisions from 2002-2007.

South Grady Way at Rainier Avenue South, southbound, eastbound and westbound:

• southbound: 1,860 tickets issued, eastbound: 1,256 tickets issued, westbound: 1,204 tickets issued.

• 168 collisions from 2002-2007.

• Sunset Boulevard North at Bronson Way North, southbound

• 1,366 tickets issued.

• 78 collisions from 2002-2007.

SCHOOL-ZONE CAMERAS

(Number of tickets issued include month-long warning period)

Renton High School, 400 S. Second St.

• 11,990 tickets issued.

• Camera active 6:50 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 8:25-2:30 p.m. on late-start Fridays.

• During a speed study, 41 percent of the 243 vehicles that passed through two of the four lanes in the zone were going more than 5 mph over the speed limit.

McKnight Middle School, 1200 Edmonds Ave. N.E.

• 3,417 tickets issued.

• Camera active 7:25 a.m.-8:20 a.m. and 2:05 p.m.-2:55 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 8:55-9:55 a.m. and 2:05 p.m.-2:55 p.m. on late-start Fridays.

• During a speed study, 67 percent of the 200 vehicles that passed through the zone were going more than 5 mph over the speed limit.

Talbot Hill Elementary School, 2300 Talbot Road S.

• 3,861 tickets issued.

• Camera active 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 3:05 p.m.-4:05 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m.-11 a.m. and 3:05 p.m.-4:05 p.m. on late-start Fridays.

• During a speed study, 22 percent of the 258 vehicles that passed through the zone were going more than 5 mph over the speed limit.