Fremont to add red-light cameras

Two intersections on Auto Mall Parkway will get the devices

FREMONT >> Fremont plans to collect roughly $1 million a year by ticketing drivers caught in the lenses of new automatic red-light cameras at two crowded intersections.

Though some other Bay Area cities have dumped such cameras in recent years after questioning whether they increase safety, the Fremont City Council this month decided to get more and install them at two intersections along Auto Mall Parkway, near the sprawling Pacific Commons Shopping Center where tens of thousands of cars typically pass every day.

After those go up — it’s unclear when — the city will have a dozen intersections with cameras on the lookout for red-light violators, according to city reports. As a result, the city estimates it could annually issue double the number of $490 tickets.

City officials say the additional cameras will help reduce collisions, but staff reports and the Fremont Police Department lieutenant in charge of the program provided debatable data.

And not everyone thinks the cameras are a good investment, including some people who called into a City Council meeting June 16. One of them, Mohan Hegde, said officials were being “extremely misleading” by suggesting the cameras improve safety, while others pointed out the hefty fines hurt low-income drivers.

Mayor Lily Mei and Councilman Yang Shao voted against renting the additional cameras, citing concerns that the city and some courts don’t

differentiate between rolling right turns and driving straight through a red light when issuing citations. They suggested that rolling right-turn violations, which are considered less dangerous, should draw lower fines.

“It’s almost like we are an accomplice to this scheme to charge people higher fines and get money,” Shao said at the meeting.

Mei said she also is worried there may not be enough court interpreters to help ticketed immigrants and acknowledged there are public concerns about the city’s longtime red-light camera contractor, Redflex Traffic Systems.

Former Redflex CEO Karen Finley was one of three people sentenced to federal prison a few years ago for a bribery scheme that netted the company lucrative contracts in Chicago. The company also paid $20 million to that city to settle a lawsuit over the scheme.

The five other council members voted to get the new cameras and extend the city’s contract with Redflex for five years.

“How much is a human life worth?” Councilman Rick Jones, a former police officer, asked in explaining his decision.

“This is a matter of protecting our residents from collisions,” he said. “I am very much in favor of these systems.”

The new cameras will be placed at the intersections of Auto Mall Parkway and Christy Street, and Auto Mall and Pacific Commons

Boulevard.

Redflex conducted a 12hour survey in February that estimated 314 cars could have been ticketed for red-light violations at those two intersections, including 271 for rolling right turns, city reports say.

Police said in their report to the City Council that collisions at the 10 intersections with cameras decreased by 62% in 2019 from the year before cameras were installed.

But some people, including red-light camera critic Jay Beeber, challenged those statistics, saying they include all collisions at those intersections and don’t specify whether the number of red-light running collisions themselves went down.

The report also said that “traffic signal-related” collisions dropped about 38% from 2014 to 2019 compared with the five-year period before the city’s first red-light camera was installed in mid-2000.

However, when factoring in a citywide drop in traffic collisions during the same periods, “traffic signal-related” collisions as a percentage of citywide collisions fell only a little more than 1%, Beeber said.

Fremont police Lt. Ariel Quimson did not cite any data when asked in an email if the city has proof the reduction in collisions is due to red-light cameras.

Instead, Quimson cited anecdotes shared by some council members about how their behavior changed after being nabbed by a redlight camera, “education through social media and sometimes through community presentations,” and city-engineered roadway safety improvements.

A city staff report said there were 31 collisions at the intersection of Auto Mall and Christy from 2015 to 2019 — the most at a location during that time period. Quimson said 19 of those were caused by drivers running a red light.

The first cameras were installed in Fremont in 2000, and by 2007 the city had 10 intersections with them. From 2007 to the end of 2019, the city issued roughly 130,000 citations through the camera program, according to city records.

While the 10 intersections generated a total of 7,094 citations in 2019, city staff reports estimate the new Auto Mall Parkway cameras could generate an additional 7,581 citations each year. From each $490 ticket, the city’s share is $147, and the rest is divvied up by the state and courts.

The cost of tickets — set by the State Judicial Council — has increased roughly 19% over the past five years, the city said.

The city estimates it can reap $1,114,473 in the first year cameras are up at the next two intersections, $1,025,316 in the second year and $963,797 in the third year.

Each year, the city would pay Redflex $120,000 for renting the cameras at those two intersections.

The city pays Redflex $479,400 a year for the cameras at the 10 other intersections, but it did not immediately provide information showing how much revenue they generate.

Quimson said the city “did not look at other alternatives” for reducing traffic collisions there.