The company Jacksonville is negotiating with to install at least 25 red light cameras at intersections around the city has been kicked out of several U.S. cities because revenues didn’t equal projections.
Jacksonville is negotiating with Redflex Traffic Systems, an Arizona-based subsidiary of Australian Redflex Holdings. The company’s contract with Albuquerque, N.M., was shot down late last year by voters and the City Council, and two West Coast cities canceled their deals.
Albuquerque Councilman Dan Lewis said he was neutral about the cameras at first but eventually came out against them when he learned more.
The city asked the University of New Mexico in December 2009 to study the effects of the cameras on crashes. It found the number of crashes at intersections with cameras increased 3.5 percent, mostly due to a jump in rear-end collisions.
Also, Lewis said, the city was running in red ink.
“The program began to lose about $100,000 a month,” he said. Although the company renegotiated, the City Council followed the non-binding vote of the people to end the contract.
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