From: Cyndy Johnsen
To: CityCouncil-List
Cc: City Clerk; board
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Item 10-B (Automated Enforcement of NROR) Date: Monday, November 4, 2024 4:42:39 PM
Attachments: 11-5-2024 CC NROR.pdf
Dear Mayor Ezzy Ashcraft and Members of the City Council, We hope you will consider our comments regarding Item 10-B, attached.
Thank you,
Bike Walk Alameda Board
Board of Directors
Denyse Trepanier
President
Brian Fowler
Treasurer
Tim Beloney
Secretary
Cyndy Johnsen
Board Member
Maria Piper
Board Member
Lucy Gigli
Founder, non-voting
November 4, 2024
RE: Item 10-B : Automated Enforcement for ‘No Right on Red’ Dear Councilmember Jensen, Mayor Ezzy Ashcraft, and Members of the City Council,
Thank you for proposing and considering this referral. Thoughtfully applied automated technology, designed with robust privacy safeguards, can help scale enforcement efforts effectively. This approach reduces the need for costly police resources and minimizes potentially adverse interactions between officers and the public.
Implementing cameras as proposed — at ‘no right on red’ intersections along Safe Routes to School and intersections where there have been one or more vehicle collisions involving pedestrians or bicyclists — seems a reasonable starting point. You might also consider including SeeClickFix ‘near miss’ data as a factor in determining camera locations. There may not be much data there currently, but as people gain confidence that reporting may improve safety, this could become a good source of information.
To staff’s suggestion that recent improvements may be sufficient for the intersections along the Cross Alameda Trail, it may indeed be too early to know. But in our limited experience so far, compliance has not been great. In just a 30-minute window on an afternoon last week, we observed 9 violations of the ‘no right on red’ prohibition for northbound drivers on Third turning right (east) onto Appezzato. If this lack of compliance persists, it’s just a matter of time before there’s a tragedy. In our opinion, it’s not worth waiting for.
We hope you will also consider automated enforcement for parking in bike lane violations ( AB 361 ), and support any future legislation for automating speeding enforcement in our city (like AB 645 ). Another way to improve enforcement would be to support future legislation that enables city staff to enforce select traffic violations that only sworn officers are allowed to enforce currently (as SB 50 would have done had it passed).
Thank you for your consideration,
Bike Walk Alameda Board