In the previous “Boulder needs money” post I pointed out that the City was adding two additional red light cameras. At that time I suggested that in the time leading up to installation the city should perform an experiment and increase the length of the yellow lights. Unfortunately, there’s not a good metric to compare before and after since there aren’t any red light camera’s installed.
Not to worry, the experiment has already been run in Georgia, thanks to a state law that increased the yellow light timing at all intersections with red light cameras by 1 second.
The drop in citations is due, in part, to a state law that went into effect Dec. 31 that mandated a one-second addition to the yellow phase at all camera intersections.
In January 2008, Lilburn had almost 1,500 citations issued at its three intersections with cameras. In January 2009, that figure plunged to about 300, said Bill Johnsa, Lilburn’s city manager.
Instapundit summarizes the situation…
If all you care about is safety, then, you can accomplish as much by adding a second to the yellow light. If you care about revenue, though, you’ll shorten yellow-light times — as some places have done — even though that’s worse for safety.
With money in scarce supply, I don’t see the City of Boulder having the courage to try this experiment. The Boulder City Council should be ashamed. They spend hours spouting intellectual psychobabble demonstrating how smart they are to the elite electorate. A little bit of common sense is called for. Remember during the Space Shuttle Challenger investigation, who put the O-ring in the ice water and demonstrated how brittle it became? None other than Noble prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. He wasn’t interested in spouting a bunch of gobbledygook to demonstrate how smart he was. No, he was interested in finding the answer. No wonder he wrote a book titled “What Do You Care What Other People Think?” and lets not forget another one of his books, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out“.
The City of Boulder isn’t interested in finding the answer. My gosh, increasing yellow light timing is almost as damn simple as putting an O-ring in ice water. But why do that when you can line the city coffers with money from (evil) automobile drivers?
Aside from the City Council, another entity that dropped the ball is none other than the Boulder Daily Camera. No big surprise coming from a paper whose editorial staff’s basic tenant is the solution lies with the government. This red light camera fiasco has been out there begging for investigation and has been totally ignored by the paper. I can only surmise that the DC doesn’t want be responsible for sucking away any more funds from a City that has lost so much revenue due to declining sales tax.
Sing it out loud and clear, “It’s about the money”!
