Katy Sawyer of Pittsburgh’s North Side cringes regularly when she crosses Madison Avenue at North Avenue to take her 4-year-old son, Wyatt, to pre-school.
It’s not unusual for Sawyer to see drivers blaze up Madison in a hurry to get to the entry ramp for Interstate 279 north. As she was walking to pick up Wyatt last week, she watched a driver blow through a red light just before she crossed.
In an effort to prevent Sawyer and others from becoming statistics, Pittsburgh Councilwoman Erika Strassburger introduced legislation Tuesday to allow the city to become the sixth in Pennsylvania to install automated red light enforcement cameras. If the intersection cameras are approved, motorists who run red lights at notoriously dangerous intersections could get a $100 ticket by mail.
For more than a decade as a city council staff member and on council herself, Strassburger has had her eye on red light cameras. Now, if council approves the program, they will become a key part of the city’s effort to eliminate all traffic deaths, called Vision Zero.
Strassburger told a news conference at City Hall that Vision Zero committees have been working for about six months with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, city departments of Public Safety and Mobility and Infrastructure, and advocacy groups such as Bike PGH to develop safety programs. Enforcement cameras are the next step, she said.
“We all know intersections near our homes where this occurs,” Strassburger said of motorists running through red lights. Last year, 23 people died in traffic accidents in the city, seven of them pedestrians.
DOMI Director Kim Lucas said the city had more than 700 crashes caused by drivers running red lights between 2019 and 2023.
“The No. 1 goal is to keep people alive and safe wherever they want to go,” she said.
If city council reauthorizes the legislation — it was first approved in 2012 but never used — the city initially will recommend “a handful” of intersections to PennDOT for enforcement cameras. The recommendations will be based on data that identifies the most precarious intersections.
Once the intersections are approved, the city will advertise for proposals from companies that want to install the systems. The project also could lead to other improvements for intersections such as new traffic signals and more visible crosswalks, which could cost $700,000 to $1 million each.
Once the cameras are installed, the system works like this after a 60-day warning period and the installation of signs identifying the automated enforcement area: A series of cameras are activated if a car illegally enters an intersection when there is a red light. The cameras shoot a photo when the vehicle enters the intersection, then take a picture of the license plate as it passes through.
Photos of potential violators are sent to an officer in Public Safety to review whether the owner of the vehicle should be sent a ticket for $100 for running a red light.
The cameras have been in use as a pilot program in Philadelphia for more than two decades and were added in Abington, Warrington, Bensalem and Montgomery over the years. Across the country, 337 communities have enforcement cameras.
Under the Pennsylvania program, municipalities can’t use the system as a money-maker to balance the budget. Most of the money from fines goes into a central fund managed by PennDOT that awards competitive grants annually to municipalities across the state to improve dangerous intersections.
The state awarded $13 million in January for 35 projects across the state. Strassburger said Pittsburgh has received about $1.4 million through the program in recent years to improve seven intersections.
Public Safety Director Lee Schmidt said another benefit of the cameras will be that they free police officers to spend time investigating other crimes rather than monitoring intersection for traffic violators.
Mayor Ed Gainey called Tuesday “a very good day” in the city’s Vision Zero efforts. In the past two years, the city has doubled the amount of money it spends on traffic-calming measures such as speed humps and more visible crosswalks to help improve safety.
He called the enforcement cameras “a shining example of how we can break down traditional silos” to make city streets safer.
Traffic safety advocate Chris Sandvig, executive director of Mobilify, stressed the importance of safety programs. He knows whereof he speaks after he was struck by a truck in Lawrenceville in April while riding his bicycle and broke both wrists and injured his back and leg, leaving him needing help “like an 18-month-old” for several months.
His accident didn’t involve a motorist running a red light, but he said it showcased the need for drivers to pay attention and slow down, especially at intersections.
“Is saving 45 seconds worth killing someone?” he asked. “I don’t think so. I don’t think my life is worth 45 seconds.”
Katy Sawyer said she gets that same feeling when she hears critics say striving for Vision Zero is unrealistic.
“What I hear is me and my son are expendable,” she said. “None of us need to be killed or injured on our Pittsburgh streets.”
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.