Suffolk COunty Long Island NY anounces new red light cameras!!!!

As bad as the first one was, did you look at the rest? Makes me want to get rid of my car. I wonder if the one with the blowout lived?

I wonder what is up with that. Either Suffolk is starting a program of moving the cameras around or perhaps this particular intersection was not earning its keep by generating enough revenue so they are looking somewhere else. The other evening the strobe at the intersection of NY-109 and Straight Path was going off quite a bit. Either they were false positives or the county raked in a few extra $$$. That is certainly one intersection that earns its keep due to the volume of traffic.

So far in Nassau, all the lights appear to be static and none of the ones I travel through have been shut down.

This is interesting. I moved from LI back in 2004 and now I'm enjoying retirement in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. I do have occasion to visit the island and will be interested how the camera can read a front license plate that I don't have. NC only requires a rear plate. This could be interesting.

I would not bet on it. Take a look at the pictures at the Nassau County RLC website at http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/TPVA/rlc.html. They track rear license plates. In fact, a close relative got a letter the other day from the Nassau County RLC Bureau in Arizona for an RLC violation at the intersection of Glen Cove Road and IU Willets Road back in May (it appears they are about two months behind in processing). They have clear high resolution photos of the rear of the car including a zoomed in photo showing the license plate. This makes sense since, as you point out, many states do not have front license plates.

In Suffolk County it is possible there are cameras that look at the front plate. One is at North Service Road and Old Nichols Road, exit 58. Driveways are in the way behind the westbound car. Another is at North Service Road and Motor Parkway, exit 57. A camera behind the northbound car would have to be located on the bridge over the Expressway. I haven't seen any cameras on bridges - they do move with traffic.

dobs108

My bad! That should have been NY-109 and New Highway. NY-109 and Straight Path is a horrible intersection too but there is no RLC there (yet?).

@dobs108: On NY-110 there are the oddball RLC's at Main Street and at NY-24. They appear to only be looking at traffic in specific directions. For the NY-24, they appear to be looking at the southbound traffic, especially the folks making a right-turn-on-red from NY-110 to NY-24 without stopping. This would catch the rear plate. On Tuesday, that strobe was flashing quite a bit as a stream of cars was turning onto NY-24. It reminded me of a disco. At Main Street, the RLC appears to be looking only Northbound, possibly for cars trying to beat the light making a left onto Main Street. I do know from a phone call my sister made to NYSDOT regarding the unique lighted "No Right Turn on Red" sign at Main Street and NY-110 that they do not monitor right-on-red turns from Main Street onto NY-110. They explicitly told her as part of the test of this new type of sign that the camera is not monitoring that activity. I made a close inspection of the intersection recently and only saw a camera by the BP station. That too would pick up rear plates if that is the activity it is monitoring. There is no camera by the Burger King.

Some of the Suffolk locations are puzzling. If the real goal is road safety, it would make the most sense to choose accident-prone locations for RLCs. Through bad design, lawbreaking or whatever the reason, there are locations that just generate intersection-control accidents on a steady basis. These do NOT seem to be the places where most of the Suffolk RLCs are positioned. Some of them are also locations that typically do not have RLC violations to begin with. For example, Jericho Tpke (Rte 25) and Pidgeon Hill Road???

Most states use rear plate pictures as a lot of states only have rear plates (they must catch a lot of cars backing up thru the lights)

Would have been a mile east on the 5 way at Dix Hills Road. Eastbounders turning onto Broadway-Greenlawn blow that one all the time.

I went through this intersection again this morning and there are definitely no cameras there.

no front plate cameras that i'm aware of in LI, only rear camera plates.

Went through this intersection today and the camera and pole the camera was mounted on are now gone. This location can probably be removed from the file.

In Newsday today, it is reported that the Suffolk Legislature may be holding a vote on the RLC contract. No, not to eliminate cameras, but over County Executive Steve Levy's ability to negotiate an extension without Legislative approval.

The county's current contract is with State and Local Solutions of Dallas, TX, and calls for the county to receive 50% of camera revenue. Due to delays in installing cameras last year, revenue fell short of budget projections, and for the next year, the county is estimated to receive $10 million from the program, half of the budget projections.

Legislators point to Nassau County, which has a flat-fee contract, and has received $29 million from the program, against $9 million in costs, since the RLCs were activated in August 2009. They are looking to move to a flat-fee plan, increase the percentage received, or possibly open the contract to competitive bidding.

Aids to Levy say they are working to negotiate a better split for the county, and to move 10% of the cameras to different areas.

Full story (subscription required):
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/suffolk-vote-on-r...

OK, you want to try to improve safety without excessive cost. But, if it can be proven that a camera saved one life why should anyone care about cost?
All of my police relatives and friends dislike the cameras and think they're just for municipal profit. Maybe if a large percentage of the money had to be committed to police budgets (without shrinking the police budget anywhere else) there would be more informed decisions about where to install.

The issue with funneling any revenue from one source to an agency is that it becomes an offset in that the funds allocated from taxes is reduced by the anticipated revenue from the other source. Funneling camera revenues to police and fire wouldn't result in any lower taxes or increased funding for them as the revenue from the cameras would allow the money that would have been spent on public safety to be used someplace else.

A while back, a camera was reported at Old Nichols Road and Middle Country Road but it was reported there was no camera there. Today I had to go to a funeral home in that area and I found there is a camera there on the northeast corner along Middle Country Road. It is located on the patch of grass in this Google StreetView:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.86075860452271N+73.06826591...

It appears to be watching westbound traffic on Middle Country Road.

There is also a camera at the intersection of Route 112 and Route 347 in Port Jeff Station.

Thanks rk8s.

Miss POI marked that camera as removed, and it was dropped from the file published Aug 10th.

JM

Thanks Aardvark. This camera will be included in this week's update.

JM

Today I was at Rt 112 & Pine Rd in Coram and got an alert for a red light camera from the January 25th, 2012 update. I did not see a camera there but was unable to get out of the car and make a close inspection. The intersection is wide-open without a lot of clutter of poles etc in the way of seeing. Can anyone confirm a camera one way or another?

dobs108

I wonder how a Red Light Camera would handle a funeral procession?

That would be a lot of red light tickets!

Despite what is done by custom, NY State law does not permit a funeral procession to go through a red light.

dobs108

As in a military, fire or police procession.

This thread is much too long. Please post for Nassau and Suffolk Counties on the new thread -

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/36059

dobs108