Traffic and speed cameras

Some of my writings from a thread on the Columbia Heights email list, about whether or not speed and red light running cameras and ticketing is a good thing, given that results don't show a decline in accidents (slightly edited):

1. Well I wish they'd cut traffic accidents but on the other hand, drivers don't have an inalienable "right" to break the law. What's the reservation for ensuring that drivers are penalized for their wilful disregard of the law? Why shouldn't people be penalized for endangering others?

There are competing priorities.

As a person who "uses" the streets, I want them to be safe. At the time, considering the public safety resources available to us, and the competing needs and priorities, perhaps paying $60,000+ (salaries and benefits) to a police officer to write tickets for speeding and running red lights is a poor use of resources, and these violations can be addressed by other means, such as via technology, which may in fact involve different standards of evidence, etc. Think of it as "business process redesign."

I'm fine with the revenue stream and the differential set of standards for ticketing...

I'm not fine with speeding--e.g., on H Street NE and Florida Avenue NE cars speed excessively, with one automated speeding ticket clocking a car 70-80 mph over the speed limit. And I'm not fine with cars running red lights as I have been hit by such cars while riding my bicycle.

Driving is a choice. So is running a red light. So is speeding.

Why should such choices come without consequences? Complaining about "the process" seems to me to be a misdirection from the fundamental issue, which is breaking the law. Frankly, more important to me than "breaking the law" is really the issue of endangering others by these acts. That's what concerns me the most.

That the City coffers yield money from this is a side issue.

2. I am not interested enough in this particular program to figure out why it works or why it doesn't or how it could be improved. I'm sure that if I put time and energy into doing thus, it could be improved--although I don't have it within me right now to try to change this particular agency, public safety, or problem-oriented policing, etc. (cf. Northeast Neighbors Aim to End Sales of Single Beers)

Plus, I often find that academic research and even evaluation research isn't specific enough for me anyway to generate information useful enough so that programs can be changed for the better. (cf. Research Methods for Community Change : A Project-Based Approach by Randy Stoecker)

IMHO, in the issue space, I find it takes about 3 years minimum to get something on the agenda, maybe 3 or more years to enact a change, and then god knows how many years to change the regulations and then the culture in a particular agency that must change to be congruent with the regulatory and law changes.

Plus, I don't find that city agencies enjoy hearing from the citizens on deficiencies and likely ways to improve.

It's a frustrating process all around.

In the meantime, I can be satisfied that there is a likely reduction in speeding and red light running overall, even if the number of accidents is the same. And I am happy that people who willfully endanger the lives of others are at least being ticketed.

3. Actually one of the best ways to deal with this is to reengineer public spaces and streets.

Part of the reason that people speed is that streets are way way way overengineered for the speeds that cars are capable of vs. the speed limits in a city (25 mph).

The problem is that such speeds are not safe for city streets which mix people, cars, and other forms of transportation, with buildings particularly close to the street, at least in the core of the city, which is typified by attached housing and commercial buildings.

Jan Gehl's work (do a search on woonerfs), www.cityrepair.org in Portland, Oregon, Dan Burden, the UK's Living Streets program, etc., are examples of this approach. (Most of these are linked on my blog.)

This report, Living Spaces: Cleaner, Safer, Greener, from the UK was particularly powerful in making me understand the link between how are spaces are designed and what people subsequently do in the spaces.

As Fred Kent (www.pps.org) says "if you design cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic and if you design cities for people and spaces, you get people and spaces."

Given all the grousing on this list about the Giant debacle, and what I saw as a real failure to see and appreciate the inextricable links between public spaces, how these spaces are used and utilized, and the quality of life and livability in the city, and what I think of as the car lobby--residents who believe that making public provisions for personally owned automobiles is a _right_ (not a privilege)--well, I will stick with cameras as a way to address speeding and and red light running in the interim.

Also see "The Agony of Defeat" and "High Cost of Free* Parking Revisited and Car Sharing in DC."