Where the cameras will be

For those of you who want to avoid getting a ticket from the about-to-be-installed red light cameras but don't want to change your driving habits, here are the intersections to avoid.

Camera enforcement, pushed by Mayor Bill White and approved by City Council in 2004, will begin in mid-August at the intersections, all but two of which are outside Loop 610.

"Our goal is to reduce the number of accidents that occur and reduce the property damage that occurs from those accidents," said HPD spokesman Alvin Wright.

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The red-light camera sites are being determined by a committee of representatives from the Houston-Galveston Area Council, Rice University and the Houston Police Traffic Division. The committee is conducting statistical analyses of crash data at area intersections.

The first cameras will be installed at the corners of Bay Area Boulevard and El Camino Real; Bellaire at Fondren; Bellaire at Wilcrest; Bingle at Pinemont; Elgin at Milam; Hillcroft at Harwin; Hillcroft at Westpark; John F. Kennedy at Greens Road; Richmond at Dunvale, and Travis at Webster.

Critics of the program say it's simply a move by the city to raise money. White and police say the purpose of the enforcement is safety.

"Our intentions here are to get folks to comply with the traffic signals and what they indicate, not to generate revenue through tickets," said Wright, the police spokesman.

For what it's worth, none of these intersections are on regular routes for me. We'll see how that is for the next set of targets.

I'm glad to hear that a bunch of traffic experts have helped pick these intersections by studying historical crash data. That just makes me want to see a study of the cameras' impact on accidents and injuries at these locations even more. There's no need to have a he said/she said debate about the "real" purpose of these things, not when there's empirical evidence available. Either these cameras will reduce the number of accidents and/or injury accidents at these intersections or they won't. Once the data have spoken, we can go from there. When we know what the real pros and cons are, we can have a real debate.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on June 08, 2006 to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | TrackBack