PICKERINGTON CITY COUNCIL
CITY HALL, 100 LOCKVILLE ROAD
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2009
6:30 P.M.
PUBLIC HEARING
OPEN DISCUSSION REGARDING RED LIGHT
CAMERAS
1. Call
to Order. Mayor O’Brien opened Public
Hearing at 6:30 P.M.
2. Roll
Call: Roll call was taken with Mrs.
Sanders, Mr. Fix, Mr. Smith, Mr. Sauer, Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Sabatino, Mr.
Wisniewski, and Mayor O’Brien present.
Others present were: Tim Hansley,
Lynda Yartin, Chief Mike Taylor, Phil Hartmann, Ed Drobina, Jim Woods, Anne
Holmes, Mark Lecuru, Christine Weekes, Mark Etzbach, Scott Seaman, Nate Ellis,
Lee Gray, Octavio Flores, Carol Carter, and others.
3. Purpose of the Public Hearing: To
hear public comments on the proposed installation of red light cameras at
selected intersections in the City.
4. Presentation
to Council:
A. Mr. Mark Etzbach, Red Flex Traffic
Systems. Mr. Etzbach presented a power
point presentation and stated he would talk about the public safety benefits of
the program and would answer any questions.
Mr. Etzbach stated RedFlex is the largest provider of photo enforcement
in the United States and they have over 220 communities under contract in the
U.S. and over 1400 systems installed and operational. He stated they have a number of types of
technologies they employ including red light cameras, speed cameras, rail
enforcement, and stop sign enforcement, and RedFlex currently has about 50
percent of the entire enforcement market.
Mr. Etzbach stated the company does have a multi-lingual call center for
violators so if you get a citation in the mail you have a location to call to
answer any questions or concerns regarding their ticket. He stated in addition to having local
customer service representatives on the ground in the State of Ohio they also
have a help desk with a 1-800 number that is available 24 hours a day. Mr. Etzbach stated last fiscal year they
processed between four and five million notices out of their corporate facility
and they expect that to double this fiscal year. Mr. Etzbach stated the communities they
currently have under contract in Ohio include Toledo, Dayton, Columbus,
Northwood, Trotwood, Springfield, Chillicothe, West Carrollton, Canton, Heath,
and Parma. He stated they are also in
active discussions with a dozen other communities that are interested. Mr. Etzbach stated Toledo has seen a 26
percent reduction in accidents at camera locations, Dayton a 37 percent
reduction plus a decline of 10 percent in rear end collisions, and in Columbus
a 47 percent reduction of right angle crashes with rear end collisions down by
60 percent. He stated time and time
again you see the public safety benefit by reducing right angle crashes and
also rear end collisions.
Mr.
Etzbach stated Pickerington was looking at a combination of red light and speed
systems and they see an impact on public safety when you have speed enforcement
systems in the ground. He stated with
these programs is you are seeing fewer accidents resulting in fewer emergency
responses, fewer officer time responding to accidents, etc., it frees up the
officers to focus on more pressing issues in town.
Once
a notice is issued, those notices are accompanied with a website location where
violators can put in their citation number along with their license plate
number and a unique city code and they can then look at their particular
evidence on line. He stated there is
also the option to pay that citation on line, depending on the city’s
requirements, so they try to streamline the process to make it as easy on the
violator as possible. He stated they
also have an automatic license plate recognition that gives the community the
ability to read license plates on a real time basis as they are passing an
intersection, so if you have stolen vehicles, felony warrants, traffic
warrants, parking violations, sex offenders, or an Amber Alert you could
actually tie this particular system into whatever data base you want and if you
have an individual driving through Pickerington where there is an Amber Alert
or whatever out, dispatch would be notified.
He stated further RedFlex actively works with the community to educate
the public on why they are doing enforcement and the benefits of
enforcement.
B. Mr. Scott Seaman, W.E. Stilson
Consulting Group. Mr. Seaman stated
Stilson provides engineering services to the City of Pickerington and he
personally maintains the traffic signal system.
Mr. Seaman stated the City had requested he look at what the impact of
possible red light cameras would be on the traffic system as far as operations,
would it cause delay, would it make improvements, etc. He stated he had presented this to the
Service committee in November and had distributed that information again this
evening. (Attachment 1 to these
minutes.)
Mr.
Seaman stated House Bill 30 in the State of Ohio requires that when red light
cameras are installed in the City an extra second of yellow time, which is your
clearance time, be installed at all four approaches to the intersection. He stated you are in essence adding time to
the traffic signal and you want to see how that impacts the delay in the
operation of it. Mr. Seaman stated his
firm maintains a traffic model of the City’s signal system and they took those
three intersections with the current volumes and expanded them up to current date
and included any additional development that is anticipated. Mr. Seaman stated he would answer any
questions anyone might have. Mr.
Sabatino clarified that the extra one second of time is added to the yellow
signal and that is based on engineering standard practices. Mr. Seaman stated the standard timing of
yellow is a national standard. Mr.
Wisniewski stated some states have found that red light cameras are such a
revenue generator that they have also decreased their yellow light to make sure
that even more violations occur. Mr.
Sabatino clarified that you are not required to follow the national
standard. Mr. Wisniewski stated we
currently follow the national standard.
Mr. Fix stated you reduce the risk of rear end crashes by extending the
yellow light. Mr. Wisniewski stated the
Federal Highway Administration has provided information that shows right angle
crashes have decreased, but rear end crashes have increased. He stated he had also provided information
regarding other studies to all council members in their packets that show there
have been increases of accidents at intersections where red light cameras are
installed. Mr. Sauer inquired if we had
received information from the City of Columbus regarding the impact of the red
light cameras, and Mr. Hansley stated he had spoken to the City Engineer and
the official of the Division of Police and they both endorse continuing the
program and they are anticipating adding additional intersections. Mr. Hansley stated they did not have crash
information available but they were satisfied enough that they were looking to
expand their program.
5. Resident
Questions/Comments:
A. Mr. Mark Lecuru, Pickerington. Mr. Lecuru stated he strong opposes the
installation of red light cameras. He
stated they do not serve the safety of the general populous and do nothing but
provide gratuitous revenue for the city government that installs them. He stated he felt this was a conflict of
interest at the expense of the citizens.
Mr. Lecuru quoted several articles that stated red light cameras area
associated with increased accidents. Mr.
Lecuru stated a large number of people receiving red light tickets were not
running red lights but making rolling right hand turns. Mr. Lecuru stated if public safety were the priority
and red light cameras were effective in promoting the safety of the populous he
was sure it would not take an outside company waving the carrot of free cameras
to urge city officials to act. He stated
red light cameras look more like fund raising and less like prudent
government. Mr. Lecuru stated he urged
the City not to install these cameras.
B. Ms Carol Carter, Pickerington. Ms Carter stated she is opposed to installing
the red light cameras in the City. She
stated it is difficult to go the speed limit down S.R. 256 so she did not see
that we had a speed problem. She also
stated she was opposed to the registered owner receiving the citation when they
may not have been the individual driving the vehicle. Ms Carter stated she would much prefer to
have the signals that have the timer showing the seconds before the light is
going to change, and we do not need the red light cameras.
C. Mr. Lee Gray, Pickerington. Mr. Gray stated he is not in favor of red
light cameras. He stated someone came
onto this property, without his permission, and installed the camera to look at
the intersection of Refugee and S.R. 256.
He stated it was removed after a couple of days and it is his
understanding it was put up by RedFlex doing their study. He stated they did not ask permission to be
on his property, and to him that showed a lack of understanding of people’s
property rights. Mr. Gray stated he has
been involved with the community and knows the hard decisions Council is facing
today, but he did not believe this would even be considered if we were not in
financial struggles. Mr. Gray stated ten
years ago he did not feel we would even be looking at this, and he did not
believe that we wanted our community to be known as the suburb that put in red
light cameras. Mr. Gray stated he would
much prefer that Council look for other sources of revenue.
6. Council
Comments/Questions: Mayor O’Brien stated
he would invite comments from Council members.
A. Mr. Wisniewski stated two or three years
ago he was in favor of red light cameras and when Akron was first installing
the program he had contacted one of their council members to get some
information on the program. He stated,
however, after he started looking into it and the more he read about it and learned
from the studies that have been done, his perspective has changed. Mr. Wisniewski stated he has looked at crash
data for our City, and he did not believe that we would have any significant
fluctuation in crashes at our intersections.
Mr. Wisniewski stated from 2003 through 2006 at the S.R. 204/S.R. 256
intersection we had about eight crashes.
Mr. Wisniewski stated he has read studies done in Houston and in
Cleveland that show an increase in accidents occurring. Mr. Wisniewski further stated in Columbus
there has been a decrease in red light running at some intersections, but there
has been an increase at three intersections.
He stated he had tried to get more information from Columbus, but the
link on the police website is broken.
Mr. Wisniewski further stated Chillicothe’s residents are up in arms
about the cameras and because of the number of citations being issued to people
making legal right turns on red they have stopped issuing tickets. Mr. Wisniewski stated we already have failing
intersections in the City and this will make them worse, it will increase the
time it takes to travel down S.R. 256, and he is not sure this is the best
thing for the City of Pickerington at this time. He stated further from an enforcement
standpoint you will not get any better enforcement of every infraction that
occurs in the City, but if you are looking at it from a safety perspective and
reducing accidents, from what he has seen, it does not necessarily correlate
that we will have an increase in safety.
B. Mr. Sabatino stated there are a certain
number of drivers that do not respect the red lights, and if you are the one
involved in a crash because someone ran the light you don’t care how many
crashes we average. He stated he is
looking at this issue only from a safety perspective. Mr. Wisniewski stated he has seen far more
accidents at four way stops than at red lights in the City of
Pickerington. He stated he has seen more
accidents at Diley and Long Road than at any intersection in the City, so there
is obviously a problem with people not respecting stop signs, and he not sure
what we are doing to prevent that with this program. Mr. Sabatino stated this program is not
designed to deal with stop signs, and Mr. Wisniewski stated he did believe they
had a program available for that.
C. Mrs. Sanders stated she did not view
this as a revenue generator, but she did look at this from a safety issue. She stated the key words that she has heard
is “changing driver behavior” and she felt we need to look at the number of
young people we have driving in this community.
She stated if we can do anything to make our roads safer without a great
expense she felt we had that obligation.
Mrs. Sanders stated she would like to know what “significant” meant, if
we were saving a family of four that was significant to her. She stated our Chief of Police supports
this, our police department supports this, and if this is a way to add patrol
officers in the neighborhoods she definitely supports this.
D. Mr. Sauer stated he agreed with Mrs.
Sanders with regard to “significant” and one crash or fatality due to a red
light being run is significant to him, one is too many. Mr. Sauer stated the people that are going to
get ticketed by these cameras are going to be people that run red lights, they
are breaking the law. Mr. Sauer stated
he supports this primarily because it is a safety issue, it gives more
flexibility for the police department to put more police on the streets where they
can be better utilized than sitting at an intersection. He further stated revenue generation is not
the primary goal of this or the goal of this at all, but if he is going to look
at the police department and public safety and the violators of the law are
going to be the ones paying the bills then where is the wrong in that. Mr. Sauer stated he would prefer to have a
situation where a good source of that revenue is coming from the ones that are
violating the law, that are taxing that department, that are causing that
department and the city all of the law abiding citizens of the city to fund
that department. Mr. Sauer stated he
did not see where the problem was for the people who were violating the law and
incurring the expense are helping to pay for the expense. Mr. Sauer stated he respected the
disagreements and opposite points of view, but he would be supporting
this.
E. Mr. Smith stated he agreed with Mrs.
Sanders, Mr. Sauer, and Mr. Sabatino. He
stated he appreciated all of the comments made this evening by everyone. Mr. Smith stated he would like to point out
that at enforced intersections the violations would be a civil violation and
would therefore not go to points and go against your license. He stated there is also provisions in the
enforcement where if it is not you, the owner, driving the vehicle there is a
way of telling our police department who was driving the vehicle and the
citation would be forwarded to them. Mr.
Smith further stated we hear a lot of statistics and it is easy to make
statistics say what you want them to say, but there are a lot of cities in
central Ohio, including Columbus, where crash data in general has decreased all
around to include rear end crashes. Mr.
Smith stated he does have one concern and he would wish that our program would
include more right turn on red enforcement as well as red light
violations.
F. Mr. Fix stated he can tell you that red
light cameras do change behavior from first hand experience, and when he drives
through those intersections he is very aware of whether the light is red,
yellow, or green, and just based on that he feels this is a good program to go
forward with. Mr. Fix further stated we
cannot deny there will be revenue generated by this program, but we have no
idea what that number will look like. He
stated it may be $5,000 a year and it may be $50,000 a year, we have no
idea. He continued that 75 percent of
the people who travel our roads are residents of our community, and city
residents are 40 percent of that 75 percent.
He stated if you multiply that out, 15 percent of the violations would
be violations by the residents of the City of Pickerington so the revenue that
would be generated by this would be significantly from outside the City of
Pickerington. Mr. Fix stated this is a
safety issue and there are studies on both sides of it and Mr. Wisniewski had
done a great job of researching this and presenting a lot of information that
show there is the possibility of increased accidents. He stated there are also studies that show
there is a decrease in accidents, it just depends on the intersection, the
timing, where the study was done, who did the study, etc. Mr. Fix stated his personal experience is
that it will change behavior, it will slow people down, and we will therefore
have safer streets.
Mayor O’Brien stated he has not chosen a side
on this, for or against; he is still listening to both sides. He stated he would only state his concern
about the cars being ticketed, not the driver and that the plan for installation
does not have cameras in four directions.
Mayor O’Brien stated further if this passes he does hope that it changes
driver’s behavior, and he would expect the revenue to decrease because people
would learn their lesson.
7. Adjournment. There being nothing further, Mayor O’Brien closed
the public hearing at 7:28 P.M., January 20, 2009.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
_______________________________
Lynda D. Yartin, Municipal Clerk
ATTEST:
________________________________
Mitch O’Brien, Mayor