Chron: City planning to have red-light cameras at intersections by end of the year

I wonder which vendor raised the most money for some councilperson's campaign this last election cycle. They're saying this isn't about generating revenue, and I'm calling bull****.

 

I'm happy for it. Light running is pandemic in Houston.

 

They've had those thing here in Charlotte for 4 years now. I think they help and they are definetely needed in Houston. Charlotte now has the speed limit cameras in busy stretches of main roads....be prepared for that coming soon.

 

Hmmm. This didn't come up during White's campaign. What did come up was synchronizing the lights downtown....which still hasn't been done.

 

Didn't know about those. Damn!

 

To be fair, that is a massive project, especially since there isn't a way to have a vendor reduce the up front costs for a piece of the pie on the back end.

Galveston has been working on their Broadway project (synching the lights) for about 5 years now (3.5 years planning and the last 1.5 working) and won't be done for another year.

Even if White just gets the ball rolling on that project he will have accomplished something.

 

Really? I guess I just don't see it. I see maybe on average 1 person/year (if that) run a red light. I drive all over town too.

 

Not compared to Austin.

 

I saw three on my way to and from lunch.

You see three at every busy intersection with a left-hand turn light.

 

I swear, you can guarantee I'm not voting to re-elect anyone who represents me and voted in favor of this bulls&^t.

 

I've been told that Houston has an unusually high ratio of deaths by red-light running. I have not verified myself. But I see it daily. Perhaps you don't see it because you have a more tolerant view of what pushing a red light is?

White, btw, has synchronized the lights in Midtown, which makes the trip down Elgin a lot more tolerable.

 

I've always wondered about those odd situations. Like say you are turning left from an intersection and it is heavy traffic and someone stops to turn off into a heavily crowded parking lot thats on the other end of your turn thus causing traffic to stop in the intersection long enough for a yellow and red light to come on. If you are the last car do you still get a ticket for running the redlight even though the guy trying to turn into the parking lot is holding up the traffic into the intersection?

 

Come on over to Beltway 8 West. I'll show you one on every light cycle. What will really get your attention though is the number of heavy trucks that do it at 50 mph.

 

Yup, I see it everyday. At 6:00 or so, there's a good chance you'll see a few cops who have pulled over red light runners, but there's never anyone at the Briarforest/Beltway intersection.

 

Man, Austin driving sucks! And this is coming from a Houstonian! I have never felt so frustrated. All the damn construction and endless miles of 1 lane.

Also, no offense to any Austinites here...but Austin drivers are A**holes too....I was flicked off twice when doing nothing, both times I wasn't even on the damn road...one of them I wasn't even in a freakin car!

A buddy of mine played at Shooters in cedarpark this past weekend so thats the reason I was in the area.

 

Drivers in Austin (usually people who learned how to drive here) have a problem with slowing down and getting behind someone when they want to change lanes, rather than speding up and getting in front of them. So you constantly have people braking on the highways for seemingly no reason and it makes things really congested. It also makes the overall speed that people drive about 10 under the speed limit, even if traffic is minimal. You can go the speed limit here and feel like you are flying, passing up every car you see. That's just what I've noticed in my 6 years living here. There IS such a thing as driving too defensively. Sometimes you just have to punch the gas or you will never get where you want to go.

 

Won't matter....as soon as the light turns red, the cameras snap the shot of the plates of the vehicles running the red light....then you get the ticket in the mail, or at least that's how they do it here. I had a friend have that same situation, tried to explain it, but still had to pay a $100 fine.

 

Funny that this thread came up...I have a brother-in-law that lives in LA (Cerritos) and he works for a car dealership. And I was in CA for the past few weeks visiting and saw that his Accord had a cardboard license place...like the ones you get when you first buy a new car. So I asked him if his car was new and he told me that he had it for a year. So I then asked him why he still had the cardboards...and he mentioned that he didn't want to get any tickets because most of the intersections in that area of LA had cameras. I laughed it off...pretty smart, though...he's never gotten a ticket.

 

True story, I swear: Here in Anchorage they installed red-light cameras because people here do it all the time, too. And EVERYBODY b****ed about it, but the politicians said it was for the good of the city. But all of a sudden, some of the more notable politicians started getting tickets from these cameras, including (or rumored, I should say) the Mayor. Within 6 months the cameras were gone.

That's politics in Alaska for ya!