Thinking about ignoring that red light when you don’t see any cars around? Think again.
Starting today, any driver caught running a red light at the following locations will face a $100 fine:
- Academy Road/Grant Avenue
- Woodhaven/Knights Road
- Bustleton Avenue/Byberry Road.
Red light cameras began operating at these locations on October 18, bringing the city’s red light camera total to 108 at 24 different locations.
The grace period at these three locations ended Tuesday which means drivers will now face a fine if they ignore the lights.
At all three intersections, signs are posted with the state-required warnings for drivers to know they are approaching a red light camera intersection. The Parking Authority says the yellow signals run for four seconds at each location.
While the red light camera program generated more than $10 million in revenue for Philadelphia last year, city officials insist it’s about safety rather than profit. In 2012, the cameras led to 131,880 citations issued as well as 26,249 warnings.
NBC10 spoke with one man who admitted he had a close call Wednesday morning at Byberry and Bustleton.
“I almost ran it,” said the man.
“Are you more careful if you know the cameras are there?” asked NBC10’s Tim Furlong.
“Yeah,” said the man.
“Because you’re concerned about safety?” asked Furlong.
“No,” said the man. “Because I don’t want to get a ticket.”
The city’s busiest red light camera location is Roosevelt Boulevard and Levick Street, also in Northeast Philadelphia, racking up 15,049 tickets in the 2012 fiscal year.
In 2011, the top-ticketed intersection was at South Broad Street and Penn Square, the south side of City Hall, with 33,627 violations in its first full year of operation. But red light camera tickets dropped there in the past year, to a total of 12,488.
