Council moves forward on photo radar, red light cameras

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With bad driving the No. 1 complaint they field from residents, city councillors are moving forward with a two potentially controversial solutions — red light cameras and photo radar.

“Police can’t be everywhere all the time,” Ward 2 Coun. Fabio Costante said Monday night, as council approved preparation of a report on the cost and implications of these high-tech enforcement measures, with the hope the matter an be decided during 2020 budget deliberations in January.

Resident Michael George implored councillors to embrace the two measures. Since moving back to Windsor two years ago, he said he noticed a “tremendous disregard for the rules of the road, particularly going through red lights.”

Motorists are treating amber lights as green lights to go through intersections, he said, urging councillors to make the roadways more safe.

Another delegation, Dan Shimski of Redflex Traffic Systems, which sells red light cameras, pointed to the societal cost of collisions: $8,000 for fender benders, $81,600 for personal injury accidents and $15.7 million for fatal collisions.

“Unfortunately, we can’t put a dollar value on the immeasurable trauma on families,” he added.

A staff report warns that red light cameras actually result in an increase in rear-end collisions.

Provincially, angle collisions are reduced by 25 per cent, but the number of rear-end collisions go up 50 per cent. That’s because people are slowing down at intersections and hit from behind by close-following vehicles, but that’s only a temporary problem, Shimski said, explaining that the collisions that go down — angle collisions and injury collisions — tend to be more serious.

From 2013 to 2017 there wer 7,335 total collisions at signalized intersections in Windsor. Of those 12 per cent were angle collisions and 50 per cent were rear-end collisions. Police report that 64 of angle collisions can be blamed on drivers disobeying the lights.

A list of the Top 10 signalized intersections for right-angle collisions shows a high concentration on Wyandotte Street in the downtown: Wyandotte Street West at Pelissier Street (6 per year), Wyandotte Street East at Goyeau Street (4.2), Central Avenue at E.C. Row Expressway westbound onramp and westbound off ramp (3.4), Wyandotte Street at Ouellette Avenue (3.2), Wyandotte Street East at Windsor Avenue (3), Wyandotte Street West at Janette Avenue (3), Wyandotte at McDougall Street (3), Howard Avenue at E.C. Row eastbound off ramp (2.8), University Avenue West at Crawford Avenue (2.2), and Wyandotte at Drouillard Road (2.2).

Red light camera fines are $325, with the municipality retaining 80 per cent. Usually, a vendor installs and maintains the cameras and charges a monthly fee based on a five-year contract.

“I personally have yet to see a program that doesn’t pay for itself,” said Shimski. He said there may be political reasons for not going forward with red light cameras and photo radar, but there are no other roadblocks.

Ward 10 Coun. Jim Morrison said he’s happy to see the city doing something about calming traffic. “It’s something I’ve been dealing with since Day 1,” said Morrison, a councillor for four years.

On a recent trip to Calgary, where these measures are currently in use, he said he noticed a “big difference” in the speed of vehicles. “In fact, I asked my sister why she wasn’t going faster. It clearly slows down traffic.”

While Ward 1 Coun. Fred Francis voted in favour of the motion requesting a report, he wanted to emphasize it’s “not a done deal.”

Ward 4 Coun. Chris Holt said the speed of traffic is the No. 1 complaints he and other councillors receive. So he expressed hope that these measures “are a piece of the puzzle that gets people to slow down.”

bcross@postmedia.com