DuPage puts brakes on red-light cameras

Municipalities won’t be putting red-light cameras at DuPage County-controlled intersections any time soon.

The county board’s transportation committee on Tuesday rejected a pair of proposed red-light camera policies that would have given towns the opportunity to seek permission to install cameras at county intersections patrolled by municipal police departments.

County administrators had recommended that cameras be allowed at intersections where at least five “preventable” crashes occur a year. They said about 120 intersections in the county’s highway system meet that standard and account for roughly 70 percent of injury accidents.

But board member Don Puchalski said he doesn’t accept the claims by municipal representatives that the cameras are about improving safety — not increasing revenue.

“We always talk about whether it’s safety or revenue,” said Puchalski, the county’s transportation committee chairman. “When you see a red-light camera that makes 85 percent (profit), I question the safety matter.”

In fact, board member Jim Healy said the only way he would support red-light cameras at county-controlled intersections was if all the profit from the $100 tickets was used to fix roads and make them safer.

“It takes away anything that has to do with whether these are just to prop up the general fund,” he said.

But municipal officials don’t support that idea. In the end, even Healy and the other transportation panel members unanimously rejected a proposal that would have given the county 25 percent of the fine revenue from each camera.

Meanwhile, Jim Zay was the only committee member to support another option for a fee-based system where municipalities would have paid for a permit that covers the county’s administrative costs.

Zay said he’s disappointed municipalities won’t be given the chance to install cameras in order to make intersections safer.

“Everybody talks about revenue,” Zay said. “If one of these saves somebody’s life, do we put a price tag on that?”

He said there are a number of county-controlled intersections in northwest DuPage that could benefit from having the cameras.

“Ultimately, we should be worrying about safety at intersections,” Zay said. “If one of these options gives us that, that’s what we should go with.”