Scottsdale Photo Radar on the 101
In my many, many trips out to Arizona, I had already felt a little like big brother was watching. Even when I first started working for JDA back in 1997, there were speed trap vans with cameras in Paradise Valley. Most recently, I was scared that I had been photo nabbed while driving on Frank Lloyd Wright one night (but apparently it was a car in front of me). But now they’ve really done it, Scottsdale has installed speed cameras on the 101.
For those of you unfamiliar with metro Phoenix, the 101 loops around the city like a giant square perimeter. The northeast corner of the 101 is in Scottsdale. It also happens to be the section of the 101 that I travelled everyday that I was out there (because of the location of the JDA office — just off the 101). Scottsdale government officials are saying that this is not about revenue and the above link seems to convey the idea that Scottsdale only receives $10 of every $157 ticket (while the contractor gets $42+ for each paid ticket). I find the $10 amount to be a little unbelievable. But based on the $73 per ticket going to the state, you can see why their governor is so happy with the idea. If you look at the numbers more carefully, you see that Scottsdale is really getting around $42 per ticket as well. This is especially true since they say the program will pay for itself in 4 months. That means in 4 months they’ll be in profit mode.
If you look at this article about the warning program to date you see the numbers:
The number of speeders has declined dramatically since the project began Sunday, when cameras snapped 1,733 drivers. Since then, the number of speeders has remained below 800, with 766 on Wednesday, 548 on Tuesday, and 741 on Monday. Officials initially expected to catch more than 3,000 speeding drivers a day.
All this is going to accomplish is to get people to slow down in that section of the 101 (possibly causing more accidents. In another article there was a mention of the dramatic increase in accidents on the 101 from 2002 to 2004. But what they clearly failed to take into account is the additional people on the 101 had also dramatically increased in that time period.
Having driven that stretch of road quite a lot, I can only say that the people of Scottsdale who wanted this and are worried about speeders are out of their mind. If they want to see crazy drivers, accidents and traffic issues, they need to just come drive in Atlanta metro for awhile. They don’t have a problem there in Scottsdale. They may think they do, but they don’t. And that’s what makes me believe that a lot of this is about revenues. The state is rubbing their hands together asking when other towns are going to follow suit. Meanwhile, I am hoping for the good people in the Phoenix metro area that this petition to stop the 101 cameras finally succeeds. I’d also love to see the real statistics about accidents in that stretch of the 101. I suspect they’ll definitely be in increase (at least in the short term) as people slam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket.