Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren has sent legislation to City Council that would end Rochester’s red light camera program.
The mayor says the program has proven so unpopular with city residents that it isn’t worth the extra revenue the city earned from the cameras, which automatically ticket cars caught in the intersection when the light changes. It also catches cars that stop past the white line on the intersection.
Mayor Warren says a study commissioned by the city was ambivalent on the value of the program in preventing accidents, and she saw the tickets fell most heavily on residents of Rochester’s poorest neighborhoods, the people who can least afford to pay.
Rochester Councilman Adam McFadden seconds that. The chair of Council’s Public Safety Committee says the city was never able to install the cameras at the intersections it wanted to protect, because they couldn’t reach agreement with RG&E and Monroe County to use their utility poles. And he says the company which supplied and operates the cameras came back with suggestions for relocating cameras to increase the money they made. McFadden says that makes it pretty clear the cameras were about money, not about public safety.
If City Council approves, the cameras will go dark on December 31st and eventually be removed.