10 more red-light cams being installed

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt announced yesterday that 10 more red-light cameras are being installed around town, some of them on state-owned roads thanks to a ruling from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Hurtt said the cameras will begin operating in about a month at the East Freeway at Uvalde on the east side, FM 1960 at Tomball Parkway in northwest Houston and eight locations on the southwest side: the West Loop at Westheimer, the Southwest Freeway at Chimney Rock, the Southwest Freeway at Fountain View, the Southwest Freeway at Westpark, the Southwest Freeway at Hillcroft, Gessner at Beechnut, the Sam Houston Parkway at Beechnut and the Sam Houston Parkway at Bissonnet. Hurtt said the new group of 10 intersections includes some of the most dangerous crossings in the city — so it'll be interesting to see whether the cameras change that. Any bets?

The first group of 10 red-light cameras has been in operation for about three weeks and caught about 1,730 violations through the end of last week. After review by American Traffic Solutions, the camera-system operator, 1,040 of the violations were forwarded to HPD and 695 citations were sent to violators (the high number of potential violations thrown out were, in part, because of a loophole in a city ordinance that we talked about yesterday).

The city plans to eventually have cameras in operation at 50 intersections, which will be chosen based on crash data.