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City drops ‘speed-on-green’ plan

ed Deer won’t be using speed-on-green technology any time soon.

Red Deer won’t be using speed-on-green technology any time soon.

A report authored by the city’s engineering department late last month found that using red-light cameras to catch drivers who speed through green and amber lights is one step that need not be taken.

“It certainly would have a mixed response in the community, as have red light cameras, and if we can’t justify it from a fairly significant safety benefit, then this probably isn’t a point in time when we want to implement it,” Colleen Jensen, director of community services, said on Thursday.

Last spring, the city had the company that runs their red light cameras collect some information through the cameras on how many Red Deer drivers were speeding through intersections.

Unhappy with the incomplete results, the city did another study in May-June, collecting information 24 hours a day and at all 10 red-light camera locations in the city.

The engineering department analyzed the results and has dismissed the technology as unnecessary in Red Deer due to low speeding numbers through green and amber lights.

Jensen said hard numbers weren’t available.

“One of the things we’ve found here, even with the red light cameras, is that because traffic volumes have increased that in and of itself has slowed traffic down,” Jensen said.

The traffic studies were free, she said, and the implementation of speed-on-green isn’t expensive because the technology is already there.

The Calgary Police Service recently released statistics that show more than 19,000 speeders were caught with speed-on-green cameras in that city over six months in 2009, which equals almost 90 tickets a day.

Critics have called speed-on-green a cash grab.

Jensen understands.

“(With red light cameras) you always hear ‘cash cow’ and all those sorts of things, that you’re just putting it out there to generate more money . . . (speed-on-green technology) would even be another added layer on top of that.”

mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com