Red light cameras invade suburban towns

Elgin recently approved red light cameras.

South Elgin is considering them.

West Dundee has a few.

And St. Charles recently ripped up a sidewalk in its downtown to erect what looks like a coin-operated viewer from the John Hancock Observatory on steroids.

Why is this relevant?

Red light cameras soon will be in just about every suburban town.

They can help with safety, but the bottom line is they're just another way to fill the government trough.

Courtesy of you. And me.

By the time this is printed, I will have received in the mail a $75 or $100 ticket from a DuPage County area suburb for not coming to a complete stop before turning right at a red light.

I turned right at a light without coming to a complete stop. It was a rolling stop. There were no vehicles coming from the left.

It was about 8 p.m. on a clear night, but there were two flashes in quick succession that I initially thought were lightning.

Wrong. They were camera flashes taking my car's picture. Instead of popping, it is more like a "cha-ching" sound.

I will not get a chance to state my case to an in-person police officer. Instead, I will receive a municipal ordinance violation - not an actual traffic ticket - and be required to pay a fine.

You see, suburban towns need revenue to offset the effect of the Property Tax Limitation Act, or tax cap (which is the subject for another day), rising pensions and whatever else.

Towns have increased their sales taxes all they can. Cook County bumped its rate up and some suburban towns are miffed because they're rate is several percentage points higher than others.

Police chiefs and municipal leaders across the suburbs will swear the cameras are in the name of safety.

To a certain extent, they are. Maybe a motorist will stop instead of running a light and avoid a bad crash.

But how do you quantify something that doesn't happen? Correlation is not causation. Besides, there are many factors that contribute to accidents - the drivers, road conditions, time of day and how well the vehicle itself is functioning.

And if safety is the mandate - why not put a camera at every intersection?

If people keep running red lights, towns will make money.

For example, RedFlex, an Arizona-based firm that contracted with Elgin, charges the city $4,395 a month to operate the cameras, maintain and monitor them and collect fines.

Any fines collected that are more than the monthly fee belong to the city.

The criteria for each intersection that was worthy of a camera was 15 red-light violations per 24 hours. The intersections are: east and westbound Big Timber Road and McLean Boulevard; southbound Dundee Avenue at Summit Street; and westbound Kimball Road at State Street (Route 31).

At $100 a ticket, that equates to $1,500 a day, or $547,500 a year - per intersection - in fines.

So the city nets nearly $495,000 and RedFlex gets about $53,000. Multiply that by three locations and Elgin can reap nearly $1.5 million. Each year.

Municipal leaders also say they hope the cameras are so effective that they're not needed and can be eventually removed.

I'm not buying that - but I'm paying anyway.