Mayor, Council Continue to Mull Red Light Camera Program

The Fort Lee Mayor and Council discussed the possibility of putting out a request for proposals (RFP) for a red light camera program Thursday but took no action on the matter.

“This isn’t to authorize the program, but I would like permission from the Council to at least explore it and see what responses we get by way of proposals,” said Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich of the discussion item on the executive session agenda. “You have my word; no action is being taken other than I’d like to see what the proposals offer to us.”

But several residents turned up at the meeting specifically to voice their opposition, expressing reservations and concerns about a program they say has failed or proven ineffective in other communities around the country.

Fort Lee resident Tom Bennett cited “five independent studies on the failure of red light cameras,” saying that in Virginia, North Carolina and Miami-Dade, among other places, they’ve increased rear-end crashes, rather than reducing traffic accidents.

“Is it a safety enhancement or a revenue generator?” Bennett said. “Are you just making money for the seller and the town?”

Noting that he may not have the support of the governing body, Sokolich said he “thought it was a good idea for Fort Lee because there are several intersections in town” he believes are used by non-Fort Lee drivers looking for a shortcut to the George Washington Bridge.

“Reliance on any study conducted by a community which isn’t similarly situated to Fort Lee is not fair,” Sokolich said. “We’re the host community to the busiest bridge in the entire world, so to compare it to a community that doesn’t have and isn’t host community to that type of a structure, I think we might be talking about apples and oranges.”

Former Council candidate and Fort Lee resident Martha Cohen said the Mayor and Council should “explore all the information, and there’s a lot of it” before issuing an RFP—suggesting they take a look at what happened with similar programs in Los Angeles, Houston and even closer to home in Hoboken, for example.

“Why don’t you explore it without the RFP?” she said. “If you’re putting out an RFP that means you’re asking for people who are going to bid to do this job and show you everything that’s positive about it.”

Cohen added, “Otherwise it’s just another way to make Fort Lee more of a ticket town than it already is.”

Councilman Joseph Cervieri said that when he and other members of the Council attended an annual League of Municipalities convention, he spoke with several people, including officials from Newark, who “said how successful the program has been, providing less accidents, counter to what Mr. Bennett said before.”

“It wasn’t just a revenue generator,” Cervieri said. “It also made people more cautious and [increased] pedestrian safety. People were less likely to run the light when they see just the sign up there saying that a red light camera is there.”

Cervieri used Palisades Park as another example of a town much closer to Fort Lee where the cameras seem to be working.

“Very few people now are actually going through that intersection at Broad and 46 simply because they have a sign up,” he said.

Fort Lee resident David Cohen pointed to national advocacy groups that have come out against red light cameras. He also said red light camera programs have been rejected in New Jersey communities such as Mountainside and Hoboken.

“I’d like the [Council] to tell us, in addition to entertaining vendors, that they will entertain some of these nationwide advocacy groups or maybe some of the people from Hoboken and Mountainside and ask them why they turned it down; why it wasn’t good for them,” Cohen said.

Sokolich said he has spoken with the mayors of Jersey City, Palisades Park and other municipalities, adding that “some don’t like it; others swear by it.”

“My mind is absolutely not made up on this issue,” Sokolich said. “This to me is a program that could potentially [increase] public safety, and secondarily, generating income seems to be something I would want to explore. I’m not committed to it. We’re not signing any contracts.”

Sokolich also said he’s learned from the state Department of Transportation that there’s a “waiting list” for gaining approval for a red light camera program, but that he’s been told Fort Lee may be an exception.

“They would consider us not being subject to that waiting list considering the circumstances that we have to deal with on a daily basis,” Sokolich said.

In June, the Mayor and Council heard an extended sales pitch from attorney Paul Kaufman and American Traffic Solutions (ATS), a company that wants to be the borough’s provider of red light camera enforcement services.

Martha Cohen asked the governing body if ATS would be bidding.

“We do have two or three vendors that we probably would encourage them to [bid] or send them the proposal,” Sokolich said. “If [ATS} made the original presentation, I would think they would [bid].”

The Mayor and Council still have to vote on whether to issue the RFP; after aproval of such a resolution, it could be another few months before the plan could move forward.