FOX 5’s Jennifer Franco covered Wednesday’s council meeting and laid out the numbers behind the debate. Council voted to direct staff to study what a red light camera pilot would look like, what it would cost each year, where the cameras would go, and how the data would be managed.
The old program is the reference point. Encinitas ran cameras at two major intersections for 16 years, El Camino Real at Encinitas Boulevard and El Camino Real at Olivenhain Road where it becomes Leucadia Boulevard, at an estimated $209,000 a year, and ended it in 2020.
A new program would not look like that one. Under Senate Bill 720, violations are civil penalties, so they do not go on a driver’s record. A first citation is $100 and repeat violations jump to $500. Cameras capture license plate images rather than faces, and money from citations has to be reinvested in traffic safety.
Rebecca Troyan, co-founder of Safe Streets Encinitas, told council she believes a camera at the intersection where Emery Chalekian was killed would have stopped the driver from running that red light. Emery’s father John Chalekian asked the city to dedicate resources to a well-designed pilot study so everyone can see the results for themselves. Opponents agreed safety has to improve but argued cameras raise data and privacy concerns and do not address the root cause of dangerous driving. Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara was among those who objected to the surveillance side of it.
Mayor Bruce Ehlers said he is open to the cameras based on the city’s own before and after data, which showed rear-end collision rates dropping significantly at one location. He told FOX 5 that council could vote on something more concrete by the end of the year.
Watch the full report here: Encinitas weighs return of red-light cameras after deadly crashes, FOX 5 San Diego
