No red light cameras yet for Alamo Heights

While the city-within-a-city of Balcones Heights has adopted red light cameras, its sister city-within-a-city Alamo Heights has demurred.

Police Chief Rick Pruitt says right now the situation is too fluid, with many measures in the Legislature that would crack down on red light cameras.

"There are just so many bills out there, and there is really no direction to these things, other than revenue sharing to the state," Pruitt told 1200 WOAI news. "We may not even be able recover the costs we need to implement this program."

The City of Beauty and Charm authorized a pilot program to test red light cameras on Broadway near Alamo Height High School last year, but so far no cameras have been installed. By contrast, Balcones Heights rushed a red light camera program into place and it's four cameras started mailing phony tickets to people photographed running red lights last Sunday.

Not that reporter Jim Forsyth has any opinion on the subject, mind you. I should note that I spent the summer of 1987 living in an apartment complex on Broadway slightly south of Alamo Heights High School.

As 1200 WOAI news has repeatedly reported, there is no legal requirement that people pay red light tickets they receive in the mail. In Houston, which has had a red light camera program in place since November, no more than a quarter of the people who have been mailed the tickets have paid them.

As we know, that 25% figure is bogus. This is not the first time that Forsyth has been overly casual about the facts. I don't have any qualms with the anti-camera position, but can we at least be honest in our arguments about them?

Pruitt says Alamo Heights will take another look at red light cameras this summer, after the Legislature has adjourned.

Alamo Heights is basically the West U of San Antonio, with better architecture. (Though not as good as Olmos Park.) As with West U here, the adoption of red light cameras, coupled with their enthusiastic approach to speed limit enforcement, would just about ensure that nobody ever drove there unless they absolutely had to. Whether that's a bug or a feature depends on your perspective. Link via the Walker Report.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on March 30, 2007 to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles