Redflex

The Columbus City Council voted 6-1 yesterday to hire Redflex Traffic Systems to install cameras at 17 intersections to catch motorists that run red lights. Redflex claims the city could net as much as $4.5 million a year in extra revenue.

Let's take a look at that number. At $95 a ticket, that comes out to 47,368 tickets paid to the city of Columbus. That puts RedFlex into the greater than 2,000 tickets per month pay threshold meaning their cut is fifty percent. That means for Columbus to reap $4.5 million, the system will have to write 94,736 tickets at just 17 intersections. That sounds like a hell of a lot of tickets in intersections that will be clearly marked as having cameras. This seems to be an unsustainable number.

One thing not mentioned in this article is whether or not these citations will be sent to the BMV causing points to be added to your license when you may or may not have been driving your car. The article does say you can challenge the citation.