Red-light cameras: big money or big pain?

Nearly a week into Houston's first experiment with a red-light camera system, we have two interesting pieces of news — well, as interesting as news about red-light cameras can be, that is.

First, from the Chronicle, the city's revenue from tickets issued using the cameras could be way more than projected, provided that people actually pay their citations. And that seems to be a big "if." In estimates about the system, police figured about a quarter of violators would pay their $75 citations, which could bring in about $6.7 million a year. But in some other cities with red-light camera systems, as many as 90 percent of offenders pay — if Houston matches that, the city could earn about $24 million a year. In either case, the system will pay for itself: The city will pay American Traffic Solutions, the contractor, around $2.5 million a year.

Of course, there's no reason to assume that 90 percent of Houstonians who get tickets from the system will pay them — but in the last three years, the payment rate on parking tickets has been 60 percent, and ATS head Jim Tuton told the Chron it's normal to have higher payment rates on red-light tickets than parking violations because the camera citations, which are backed up by photos, are hard to dispute. And that brings us to the second bit of news, from KHOU: The camera tickets just might lead to headaches at the municipal courthouse. Channel 11 imagines 300,000 citations a year, and if a third of them object, it would make an already crowded municipal court system even more crowded. For now, HPD has two full-time officers assigned to reviewing each red-light camera case before a citation is issued, and they, too, could quickly get overworked — especially if they're subpoenaed to testify in court.

It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. In the meantime, we think we'll be better off not running red lights.