CC Minutes - 02/21/07 Work Session

Home Browse Search

In response to a question from Mr. Zelenka, Mr. Larsen stated that there were a number of vendors that offered a variety of systems. He thought most of the more recent technology captured a video segment. He noted that in the state of Oregon, the camera was required to photograph the auto license and the driver. Gender was checked to ensure that the registered owner who was receiving the civil citation at least resembled the driver. Ms. Bettman favored “anything that works,” though she preferred to review the efficacy of changing light intervals before spending money on additional technology. She wondered if there were particular character- istics of an intersection that was prone to have people run red lights. She noted that there were presentations in the schools that showed graphic depictions in the aftermath of accidents. She suggested an educational campaign featuring such depictions. Mr. Larsen said he did not have any data on a campaign and how that might work. He thought given that the violating drivers skewed young, they would not tend to respond to such a campaign because of the sense of invincibility that most young people have. Ms. Ortiz remarked that driver’s education used to be part of the school curriculum. She regretted that it was no longer routinely offered. She believed it was a social responsibility to instruct young people on how to drive. She opined that the reason people felt they could disregard lights was because there was a lack of officers on the street and people knew they would not get caught. Ms. Taylor suggested that a city-wide traffic committee be formed. She observed that people all feel their neighborhoods are experiencing more problems than other neighborhoods, but she felt that all neighborhoods were seeing a similar level of traffic issues. She thought a committee to consider different ideas for traffic mitigation would benefit the discussion. Mr. Pryor agreed that young adults and teenagers were probably responsible for the largest portion of these traffic infractions, but he had witnessed every age group and people from every socio-economic stratum running red lights. He found the table in the AIS informative and had been pleased to see that Eugene was “not as bad” as other places. However, he believed that 464 crashes caused by disregard of traffic devices was 464 too many. He said it was an issue that had to be addressed. He acknowledged that he was throwing “an enormous issue” into the laps of traffic engineers and said he hoped they could find a way to get a handle on the problem. Mr. Clark recalled that many years ago there were a lot of people parking in handicapped parking areas illegally and that a campaign had been conducted to take pictures of cars and send the owners a note. He wondered if the Volunteers in Policing could play a role in monitoring this issue. Chief Lehner replied that the short answer was yes, in that the EPD used a similar program in the past with neighbors monitoring speeding. He said the civilian monitors were not able to issue citations, but it was felt that sending a couple of letters to those who were committing the infractions did get their attention. He added that it was pretty significant in terms of its resource needs, though most of the people were not paid staff. Chief Lehner commented that while he agreed with Mr. Pryor that any number was too many, it was important to ask the question of at what cost. He said this was why the issue of red light cameras versus in person enforcement was significant. He stated that from a cost perspective, if the objective was to issue citations to people to encourage them not to repeat that behavior, on a per violation/per citation basis there would be a greater effect with photo radar than with police officers who were expensive resources. He MINUTES—Eugene City Council February 21, 2007 Page 3 Work Session